Graphic Designer's Essential Reference

Using Color to Enhance Messaging

Selecting Color for Meaningful Effect

Color, of course, can also mean something. Very often, that meaning is tied to associations we make between colors and objects or environments—water is blue, vegetation is green, and so on. But colors also evoke intangible feelings, whether by association or by the biological effects resulting from their perception. Red, for example, connotes hunger and violence (because of the color of blood), but provokes arousal and even anger, because it takes more energy to process red lightwaves—resulting in increased metabolic activity. Further, colors carry cultural or social meanings, related to their use in religious ceremonies or iconography, or in heraldry, in flags, or historically ...