Color shapes how people perceive you, though the science isn't strict. Red signals passion, blue brings calm, green feels fresh, yellow upbeat. These associations vary by culture but can be used strategically in branding to influence how others respond.
What should we be doing and what generally should we know about color as it relates to how it impacts other people?
There isn't really a scientific basis for color. It's cultural context and universal human response to color. For example, red, redness in the cheeks could be anger. It could be turned on. It's a passionate color of both good and bad. Blue, on the other hand, calming exactly because clear blue sky means crops. We're going to have sun today. Makes us feel sort of secure and safe. Green is the color of spring, universally across cultures. And so it tends to give kind of a freshness and newness. Yellow is the color of the sun. It's a very high frequency color, and so it tends to be a positive color, a very upbeat color. White always reminds humans of cleanliness, but it also could be pure. Black is the most formal color. It's the most mysterious, the most formal, and it's the most basic in the sense of if you wear a black shirt, I'm going to focus more on your message because you're not sending me any signals. It just saying, don't focus on this, focus on my content. So I don't think any of them are right or wrong, but I think it is important to know how they cue you. I know I feel a certain way in certain colors, and that's really important. And then if you're thinking about branding or marketing, then I think you can think of colors in terms of what do they signal.
