Most of my clients comment about color as a reason for hiring us. They like, or love- sometimes… the way we use color. I don’t think that is by chance, in fact, I know it is deliberate. Color can be intimidating, color can be… anything really. But, color can also be controlled and purposeful.

Colors are associated with all kinds of references in our world. Green with envy. Singing the Blues. Seeing Red. Sunny Yellow. In the Black. Getting a Pink slip. Traffic lights. Sometimes those familiar associations cannot be denied and should be considered when telling your story. “Green means go” Would trying to say “go” with the color Red be effective? I’d say probably not and most likely use Green. Why not? There are times to be creative and there are times to to know what works. I feel we save our clients valuable time with these decisions and use that time for other aspects of their job.

Will any old shade of Green do the trick? Would you believe that color choice could be instinct? I see color in stages, there are some basic colors most of us learn as kids; Blue, Red, Yellow, Orange, Green, Brown, Black, and White. Then there are the colors that we all sort of know and agree on; Burgundy, Tan, Pink, Beige, and so on. Let’s not leave out some common descriptive colors; Pea Green, Sky Blue, Ruby Red. Those are all colors and then there are variations on color- many, many variations. Value refers to light and dark. Tinting a color generally means adding White, and lightening the color. That’s a fairly simple concept for most of us to understand. There are more complex concepts such as saturation. What the heck does that mean? Well, let me try and describe it. I would say saturation means “more color” but that doesn’t really describe it accurately. It has to do with the brilliance of color, brighter but not necessarily lighter, more intense. All of this is to describe my point. Color is best demonstrated in action and not by description.

Color also looks different based on environment with atmospheric influence such as light and other colors being reflected. How the color is delivered also makes a big difference. Color on a computer display or video screen is not like color on paper or other opaque surfaces. Electronic displays are shining light through the color, opaque color has light shown on the color. There is no way they would ever match. So how do we make the on-screen color the same as the color on paper? We can’t. No one can. In fact, we also have variations in color from one screen to the next, from one computer to the next. So we create the illusion that the colors are the same. Some may say this is matching but I would say technically, they are impossible to match and they are as close as possible.

There is so much to be said about color and I plan to write more in the future. It has always been interesting to me how people attempt to describe and even think they have “mastered” color somehow. The more I think about it, the last thing I would want to do is be its master. -tw