One of the most basic questions any client or designer can ask about a logo or other design is: What color(s) should I use? As most of us are aware, different hues are used for different purposes. We're all familiar with the use of color on the road. Red on a traffic light means stop, and green means proceed if the intersection is clear. We've also seen green used for Christmas decorations, and red used for Valentine's Day cards. Yellow is often used for the “police line” tapes that are put up to keep people from wandering into dangerous areas. Black, in this part of the world, is the “color of mourning” and is often used for funerals. How can we use these colors to say what we want to say in a graphic?

Blue is a very common color used by businesses, and packages and labels often incorporate some shade of blue. Blue can be seen as the color of authority. It often has a cool, calming effect. It might suppress the appetite too. As I hope you can see, blue might be used on a government website or brochure. It also can be appropriate for and ad promoting a rest area or park. You wouldn't want to use blue for a restaurant menu, though, because you could ruin your customers' appetites!

If you do wish to increase appetites, then red or green should be more appropriate. These colors have been found to stimulate the palette. You might wish to use some hue of red for candy wrappers or a super market sign. If the food is sweet, though, then avoid green because it won't increase appetites for those kinds of foods.

Green, like blue, can have a calming effect. It might be a good choice for furniture-store signs. It also evokes images of nature, and ads promoting environmentalism might make good use of green.

Yellow might have the opposite effect of green or blue, and research has found that yellow can cause anxiety. Nevertheless, yellow can be a very useful color to gain attention quickly. If you're looking for a design for a bottle label, for instance, you might wish to use yellow as a background for text that you especially want the customer to notice. The text might say something like “New and Improved!”

Like yellow, orange can be an attention-getting color too. Some people see it as a “loud” color. Orange could be useful for an CD cover for a rock band.

One needs to be careful when using these assumptions about color, though. What might be true about red, blue, green, or orange here in America, might be significantly different in other cultures. We often associate blue with boys, but in China, blue is for girls! In Japan, white, rather than black, is a color for funerals, and in South Africa, the color of mourning is red. Although we Americans associate yellow with cowardice, in Japan it's the color of courage. Color psychology, then, is rooted in a culture, and businesses need to understand these cultures to use appropriate colors.

Here at FreeForAll Designs, you're assured that such matters are an important factor in the design of your graphics. What colors I use will be based in accurate and reliable knowledge of appropriate hues and how those hues affect people. There's a lot riding on your logo, business card, or ad, so make sure you hire a designer who knows how to promote your business with appropriate hues.

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