How To Understand Colors and Their Impact Part 2

Yesterday we had a post about colors and how they can impact people emotionally, physically, and mentally. The reason for these posts is because as a graphic designer, you will be using color in your designs and sometimes, it will matter what colors you choose simply due to how they will affect your audience.

• Orange (Orange): orange gives us a feeling of stimulation since it is a combination of yellow and red and affects us in an emotional and physical way. It allows our minds to think of things that bring us comfort, physically; it makes us think of things like food, warmth, shelter, etc. This is often seen as a fun color for our minds. 
• When positive: orange gives us thoughts of comfort, food, warmth, security, passions, fun, good times etc. 
• When negative: it can give us feelings of frustration, immaturity, and deprivation. 
• Pink (Pink): Pink is a combination of red and white, however, due to the white, this color often soothes us instead of stimulating. It does often represent femininity, like a sense of feminine power. It can bring us feelings of nurturing. 
• When positive: it brings us tranquility, nurturing, love, survival
• When negative: it can make us feel inhibited, emasculated, weak
• Grey (Grey): This color actually is pretty easy on the mind, it does not bring much to the mind in terms of emotion, mentality, or anything physical. It is a neutral color, for the most part. It is sometimes seen as suppressive and create a sense of hibernation. 

• When positive: neutral. 
• When negative: it can make us feel unconfident, damp, depressed, lethargic. 
• Black (Black): Black often brings us considerable impact on our mind and body. It can make us feel protected and takes in all the energy around us. It can be negative in terms of enshrouding our personalities when there is too much of it around. However, it can help us see clearly because there are no distractions and give us a sense of sophistication. 
• When positive: sophisticated, glamorous, secure, safe, efficient. 
• When negative: oppressed, cold, menacing, heavy. 

Next time you consider the colors for a graphic design job, consider them carefully. If you have any questions about this, contact Integraphix - a Chicago graphic design studio. 

How To Understand Colors and Their Impact

As a graphic designer, you will likely use color in your designs (I say likely because you might have a black and white design once in a while). Believe it or not, colors have an impact on people, they manipulate us without us even realizing it.

Here is how the colors have an impact on us:

• Red (Red): This color affects us physically. It often grabs our attention first among other colors because the mind perceives that object as closer to us than it really is. It can increase our heart rate and give us the impression that time is going faster. 
•  When it affects us in a positive way, it can make us feel stronger, more courageous, warm, energetic, masculine, and excited. 
• When this color affects us negatively, it can make us defiant, aggravated, and strained. 
• Blue (Blue): This color affects us intellectually/mentally. It often has that soothing effect on us because objects of this color seem more distant and encourage openness. Although, it can be perceived as unfriendly. 
• When this color affects us positively, it gives us the feeling of intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, serenity, logic, calmness. 
• When it is negative, it has a feeling of coldness, emotionless, and unfriendliness. 
• Yellow (Yellow): This color affects us emotionally. It is a very strong color and will often give us a good feeling, like hope, confidence, and optimism. It is said to lift our spirits. 
• When this color affects us positively, it gives us feel ins of optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, friendliness, and creativity. 
• When negative, it can provoke irrationality, fear, depression, and anxiety. 
• Green (Green): This color affects our balance (not walking balance). Green is perceived to the eye as a color that creates rest/peace and creativity. It is the color of all things balance. It is a color that often represents health due to being the color of healthy vegetation. 
• When positive, this color creates harmony, balance, refreshment, love, rest, peace, and reassurance. 
• When negative, boredom, stagnation, and blandness. 

If you have questions about what colors to use in your graphic design, then contact Integraphix. 

We will have more posts discussing color.