Color: Yellow

 

“Everyone knows that yellow, orange, and red suggest ideas of joy and plenty. I can paint you the skin of Venus with mud, provided you let me surround it as I will.”  – Eugene Delacroix

I haven’t talked about color and its meaning in a while and decided today is the day because it’s a beautiful day and I feel like it!

Yellow, a color that most people either love or hate. Most people describe it as a cheerful color, a color that brightens a room, but it also strains the eye due to the high amount of light that is reflected. Because of how vibrant it is, yellow is used to grab peoples attention, thus using it as a warning sign for traffic lights, and traffic signs.

People have different feelings towards the color of yellow. Most find it a happy color, an optimistic one. People think of it as a color that shows confidence, originality, and creativity. It is known as challenging and fun. It also makes people feel as though it is a critical and judgmental color. A color that is impatient spiteful and cowardly. It reminds people of sickness, like the yellow fever, and when there is too much yellow in a room it causes agitation and anger.

What do you think of the color yellow? How does it make you feel?

 

Color: Green

“Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.” — Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Green is a secondary color. It is made by mixing equal amounts of two primary colors together. The two primary colors are blue and yellow.

When most people think of green they think of lands filled with lush plants, hills covered in beautifully bright grass, they think of nature, and of course, money. Green strikes the eye in such a way that it requires no adjustment and is therefore restful. It is the second favorite color chosen by people after blue. Since it is in the center of the spectrum, it is the color of balance and is the perfect backdrop in interior design, because we see it so often in nature.

Green is known as the tranquil and refreshing color. It is considered the color of peace and ecology. It helps alleviate depression, and anxiety and offers a sense of renewal, self control and harmony. Green is a good general healing color because it stimulates growth.

It also is the color that is associated with boredom, blandess and enervation. It is the color people associate jealousy and greed with. This is were the saying “Green with envy” comes from. People are reassured by the color green because when the nature around us contains plenty of it, it indicates the presence of water, and so there is little danger of famine.

A great color that can refresh you and your surroundings!

Color: Red

 

“Red is obviously such a stimulating color, and it has so many connotations.” –P. J. Harvey

I had written a post a few days ago titled Color and Psychology , how color can affect our moods, and how each color is bipolar. This post is about the color red!

I love the color red. Its intense, passionate, and vibrante. Its sort of like the extrovert in the crowd. It simply stands out demanding attention. When I’ve given a lecture about color and its psychology, I’ve always asked the students what was the first word that comes to mind when you think red. Like most of you, they think of words like “passion”, “sex”, “love”, or even “anger”, “hate”, “jealousy”, and so on. Red draws attention. It demands you stop what you’re doing and to pay attention to it. It also excites people, and stimulates a faster heartbeat. It also increases some peoples appetite.

Red is a symbol of purity and integrity in India, a color of celebration and good luck in China, and mourning in South Africa. Depending on the country you were raised in depends on what you feel towards a particular color.

Red typically symbolizes passion, anger, blood, sex, love, excitement, romance, bravery, power, masculinity, war, arrogance, ambition, leadership and danger. Its a very intense color that can affect us physically. It is said that red increases enthusiasm, stimulates energy and can increase the heart beat, blood pressure, respiration and pulse rate. It also encourages action and confidence.

 

Color & Psychology

 

People always seem to think im crazy when I say that colors are bipolar. They sort of back up and give me these odd looks and until I explain why I believe so, they simply think I’ve been sniffing too much paint!

Think of color as a scale. It can go either way. For instance, when I say the word “red”, what comes to mind? Many people would say red is passion, love or sex. Others would argue that its also anger, or evil. On one side of the scale you have the passion, love, or sex. On the other you have the anger or evil. Its the same for any color. You can think of it as negative and positive characteristics of a color if you want.

Colors evoke emotions in all of us. Many of the emotions about color comes from the society we live in, while the rest comes from our experiences in life. In India, red is a symbol of purity, while in South Africa its the color of mourning. You may like a color for what it represents in your life, from it being the color of the flag of your country, to hating that particular color for it being the color of the flag your country is at war with.

When you wake up in the morning, and are trying to choose what to wear, the question “what do I feel like wearing today?” usually passes through your mind. “Feeling” being the operative word here. Your mood dictates what you pick out of your closet. What colors you choose to wear at that given day. It surrounds us as well. Logos, restaurants, malls, signs, they all use color and psychology to get you to feel a certain way the moment you look at them.

Policemen wear blue uniforms so that citizens feel like they can trust them. Stop signs are red to alert us of danger. McDonalds is red with yellow arches to make us feel happy and hopeful (the yellow), and exciting (with the red). Look around you more carefully and ask yourself how things make you feel, and you will start to notice a pattern. Red cars usually have higher car insurance rates, because their owners usually drive them faster, and they have more car accidents.

You start to realize how fascinating and powerful colors can be. How complex one color can be, and this is without going into the shades of colors and their hues! I will probably blog on different colors and try and explain their properties and characteristics. Obviously one post about all the colors at once would be too long, so I’ll divide it up! If you want to read a little more about colors, below is a magazine I created by researching colors and dividing articles up based on the color.

I hope now you see why Im so fascinated with color, why they make me giddy and you understand their incredible properties on life!

http://static.issuu.com/webembed/viewers/style1/v2/IssuuReader.swf

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