Color Psychology and Graphic Design

by Bharat Bista

Colors have psychological impacts, they are attributes of eyes, but are the chemistry of the mind. Colors are perceived though pupils and its effects are produced with associated nerves to the brain neurons.

Light reflecting through objects in different wavelengths and frequency stimulates different “cones” or color receptor cells of the retina in the eyes and makes perception possible for different colors.

Colors influence people through psychological changes and are associated with certain feelings and meanings. Colors exist everywhere else, it is omnipresent. Colors represent cultural, social customs and emotional values and its use in arts, printing, designing, websites, graphics, etc. – these days are unavoidable.

Choosing proper color is an essential constituent for your website and its graphics; as visitors to your website first encounters colors and graphics before they read your textual descriptions.

Colors are used in website design and graphic design for various forms; use of colors can be for backgrounds, navigation, logos, and navigation buttons to emphasize, highlight, symbolize your text description and outlining your site.

Despite the fact that your website is enhanced and fabricated with textual and graphical design, if you are using the wrong color combinations, then you are annoying your own visitors rather than appealing to them. As a result, to attract your customers, it is important to understand psychological behavior of your customers to your websites chromatics. The use of wrong colors results in the wrong impression.

Below are the details for color interpreted through different professions, culture, and physiology science:

Red: Red is a color of Intensity, stimulants, love, gaudiness, blood, war, excitement, speed, heat, leadership, masculinity, power, passion, strength, energy, financial loss, Danger, fire, radicalism, aggression, stop, anger, and revolution.

Blue: Blue is a color of peace, unity, harmony, depression, coldness, ice, tackiness, winter tranquility, calmness, coolness, confidence, water, ice, loyalty, conservatism, dependability, cleanliness, technology, winter, idealism, and obscenity.

White: White a color of peace, innocence, cleanliness, simplicity, security, humility, sterility, winter, reverence, purity, coldness, surrender, cowardice, and fearfulness.

Black: Black is a color of power, sophistication, Evil, death, fear, anonymity, anger, sadness, mystery, formality, elegance, wealth, style, remorse, mourning, and unhappiness.

Green: Green is a color of nature, spring, good luck, illness, greed, vigor, generosity, go, grass, wealth, money, fertility, youth, environment, envy, misfortune, jealousy, aggression, and inexperience.

Purple: Purple is a color of spirituality, royalty, nobility, enlightenment, sensuality, creativity, wealth, gaudiness, ceremony, mystery, wisdom, mourning, profanity, exaggeration, confusion, arrogance, and flamboyance.

Brown: Brown is a color of richness, stability, anachronism, dirt, dullness, filth, heaviness, poverty, roughness tradition, calm, depth, natural organisms, and nature.

Yellow: Yellow is the color of joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, gold, summer, hope, air, sunlight, hazards, dishonesty, avarice, weakness, cowardice, and illness.

Orange: Orange is a color of energy, flamboyance, playfulness, balance, heat, fire, enthusiasm, overemotional, warning, danger, fire, aggression, arrogance, flamboyance, and gaudiness.

Even choosing color is a professional skill in graphic design business, as it is not only just the colors, but also are the colors that stimulates the mind of your viewers. Graphic designs inevitably comes with colors and selecting the best ones for your business is an expertise.