The Meaning of Colours
Notes on Branding

We learn to use colour from an early age. We experiment with coloured pencils, wax crayons and sometimes just ketchup on the white tablecloth. Children are much more intuitive and playful with colour than adults. The lemon in the drawing is sometimes red, or the rabbit has purple ears. Only with time we learn that colours can be associated with certain things or even feelings. Suddenly we realise that the lemon must be yellow and that a rabbit with purple ears makes no sense at all.

But how much of this set of rules is based on actual science? And how much of it is simply the result of our desire for simple guidelines?

How do we perceive colour?

Colour perception is first and foremost a purely physical process. A colour has no intrinsic meaning, but over the course of life it becomes imbued with emotion. The associations we have with a colour depend on our personal experience, but also on culture and geography.

While in Europe no one would think of wearing white to a funeral, in Japan it is quite normal. There, white symbolises mourning. But associations can also change. In the 1920s, pink was advertised as “little red”, a boy’s colour. Today, girls’ rooms are all pink.

In fact, our response to colours can be measured. When a person is exposed to blue light, for example, their blood pressure drops, their pulse rate lowers and their heartbeat slows. With red, our body reacts in exactly the opposite way: the colour signals that we are on high alert.

While physical reactions to colour can be quantified, the emotional effect is not quantifiable. The Lüscher Colour Test, for example, attempts to draw conclusions about a person’s personality from their preference for certain colours. No one has yet been able to scientifically confirm this correlation.

Is your red also my red?

The difficulty with colour psychology starts with the basics. Our perception of colour takes place in the brain. So if there were two brains that were exactly the same, we could assume that they would both produce the same colour perception. But this is impossible. Also, we automatically assume that our counterpart already knows what we mean by ‘red’. But how can we be sure that the other person perceives a colour in exactly the same way as we do?

If people may not perceive colours identically at a purely biological level, how can we assume that it is different at an emotional level?

Why it is good to break with conventions

Nevertheless, many people are guided by the (supposed) findings of colour psychology. A set of rules can be helpful in many cases, making the decision easier and giving meaning to a seemingly unconscious choice. Around 60 to 90 per cent of all purchasing decisions are based on the colour of a product. That’s why designers are particularly keen on a clear solution.

Eva Heller’s book “Wie Farben wirken” (German for “how colours work”) has revealed that colours can hardly be assigned a specific meaning.

Brands such as Manner, Magenta and Raiffeisenbank prove that it can be worth breaking with the “rules”. Manner’s characteristic combination of blue and pink would make any strict colour psychologist groan. Raiffeisenbank uses a combination of black and yellow, which in nature is used by wasps as a deterrent. The bright pink of magenta is anything but harmonious or pleasing to the eye.

But that’s ugly.

These colour combinations are a bit like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. There are flavours that you know go well together: Peanut butter and jelly is none of them. People are used to certain conventions. If someone comes along and combines two flavours that don’t seem to go together, we get confused.

But for all the thinking, theorising and analysing, at the end of the day there will always be someone who, on taking their first bite of the jam and peanut butter sandwich, will make a disgusted face and spit it back onto the plate. Taste remains an individual experience that cannot be completely planned in advance – neither in the kitchen nor in the design office.