Killer Visual Strategies

CHAPTER 6RULE 3: THERE'S NO GOLD AT THE END OF THAT RAINBOW

Figure 6.1

Source: Singh, “Impact of Color on Marketing.”

A simple search on color theory will yield nearly one billion results on Google. You'll find theorists, marketers, designers, and others sharing their opinions and studies on how color impacts consumer behavior.

Many will argue that shifting a button from green to red will guarantee a boost in conversion rates on your website, or that you consider a different color palette depending on the gender of your target audience. And you can't go down the color-psychology rabbit hole without seeing at least one reference to Robert Plutchick's wheel of emotions (Figure 6.2), which seeks to simplify the correlation between color and feeling with a very specific set of guidelines.

But the concept of color driving emotional responses has been widely criticized by psychologists over the years. While, yes, changing the color of a button on a website may help increase sales, this often happens because the new color choice is bright and stands out in the context of the site's broader design structure. And while a color like red may imply anger or rage, it doesn't seem to inspire a negative reaction when used as the primary brand color for such successful companies as Netflix, Kellogg's, Target, McDonald's, Adobe, and TIME.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT COLORS FOR YOUR VISUAL CONTENT ...