Lecture Outtakes: Color Theory

Colors are the mother tongue of the subconscious. -Carl Jung

Colour Lovers

Color Meanings

Color is one of my favorite topics in Vis Com. In class we touched on color meanings, which are of course subject to myriad factors, including age, gender, personal experience, mood, ethnic identity, nationality, history…

One of the most interesting color (eh hem, colour) resources on the web right now is Colour Lovers (the rather bland home page belies the richness of this site’s content; dig around a bit). Adobe Kuler is another good resource for creating and sharing color palettes.

Trademarked Color

In response to one student’s question, I erroneously answered that colors can be copyrighted. In fact, this is incorrect. Colors can be trademarked. Apparently many in the design community are none too happy that T-Mobile “owns” the color magenta. This article from Forbes provides some good insight on trademarked color.

More on Color

I recommend this fascinating article from the New York Times on the color blue (it includes a great multimedia component). In lecture I showed images from artist JeongMee Yoon’s The Pink and Blue Projects. Finally, we touched on how color can work as a powerful mnemonic device. Check out Victoria Lam’s thesis book, Dude, Where’s My Car? to see how Lam uses color to make the quotidian experience of parking more memorable.