Tag Archives: design

I don’t like Mondays

design, opinions/rants, , , , , ,

I don’t like Mondays blue. I do actually like Mondays, unlike The Bangles. But I don’t like blue. In this, I am out of step with the majority of people. Most studies on colour preference show that blue is one of the most preferred colours, irrespective of gender or culture. But, of course, some people don’t like it and I am one of those people.

The graph below is from one of my papers. It shows the per cent of people who selected each of 6 colours when we asked which was their favourite.

When we talk about liking or disliking a colour there are two caveats of course. The first is that there are lots of different blues. You might quite like one blue but not another. Most of the literature – including some of my own papers – not only focus exclusively on hue (as in the graph above) but only look at what we might call the focal colours of these hues. This grossly over simplifies the situation.

The second caveat is that although it is fine to talk about colour preference in an abstract sense, in practical terms you might like a colour in one context but not another. To give a ludicrously simple example: you might like a red car but not a red wedding dress. So we need to talk about context in a professional design scenario.

I am writing this because today I was walking in Leeds and heading towards the university where I work and I was reminded of this interesting blue structure that appeared a few years ago.

To say I don’t like it is an under statement. I think it is horrid. I cringe every time I see it. I generally don’t like blue but this particularly colour of blue is the most horrible.

Sometimes in Leeds I would go to a coffee shop that is associated with Harvey Nichols. They have rebranded it as Rabbit Hole Coffee. Imagine my shock when I saw the horrible blue that they used.

In a design context there is a role for blue and for this sort of blue. It is used quite a lot by Greggs and Tesco.

In these two cases it is a good use of the colour blue. In my opinion it looks cheap. And for Greggs that is fine. They don’t pretend to compete with Harvey Nichols. They want to communicate to their consumers that what they sell is not expensive and that is great. And it also works well for Tesco (although it is a slightly different blue to the blue used by Greggs). Tesco don’t specifically want to communicate that they are cheap but they do want to communicate that they are good value. Definitely not on the pricey side, as we say in the UK.

So even though I don’t like blue personally I can endorse its use by Tesco and Greggs. But the University of Leeds and the Harvey Nichols cafe? I think it is a really poor choice. I would have much preferred the lovely Leeds (legacy) green which you can see on the structure just to the left of the blue tower. Even a lovely red would nice. These are the University of Leeds brand colours, which have a gorgeous dark red,

with these two legacy colours:

What type of colour information do designers want?

advanced stuff, , , ,

In this study we were interested in which type of colour information designers want. We carried out surveys and interviews (with senior designers and brand managers) and the results are summarised below:

We used a card-sorting technique in our interviews to ensure that the participants knew what each of our terms meant.

We found that colour meaning was one of the aspects of colour that designers would like to be able to put their finger on; it was more important that colour trend information in fact! We also looked some existing colour tools and found that none of them really offered the most important information that designers and brand managers want to know about colour. What would be really cool would be a tool that provided accurate information about the meanings that colours have in different cultures and perhaps in different contexts.

The full paper will shortly be published in Color Research and Application.

Won S & Westland S, 2018. Requirements capture for colour information for design professionals, Color Research and Application.

The full publication details will be added here when they are available. Meanwhile, you can read it here.

 

clothes that change colour

news, technology, ,

Colour-shifting threads that change their hues in response to electrical charges are being developed as part of Google’s Project Jacquard. The technology still has a way to go before it could be in the shops but it gives the potential that your could change the colour of your clothes with the ‘flick of a switch’ rather than buying new ones or even that clothes could change colour with your mood. As if that would be a good thing.

For more see here.

What colour is your office?

culture, design, opinions/rants, , , , , , ,

Decorating-GOMIX-new-office-2

I just saw an interesting article by Kim Lachance Shandrow about how the colour of your office can affect productivity. The article refers to a paper (2007) in Color Research and Application (CRA) by Nancy Kwallek entitled Work week productivity, visual complexity, and individual environmental sensitivity in three offices of different color interiors. The paper suggests that the influences of interior colours on worker productivity were dependent upon individuals’ stimulus screening ability and time of exposure to the interior colours. CRA is a top quality academic journal that is peer reviewed and so I am respectful of the findings.

However, in Kim’s online article there is a lot of stuff that I am highly sceptical about. For example, she writes that “Red … increases the heart rate and blood flow upon sight.” Is this true? Is there really any evidence for this. I have two PhD students working in this area right now and I am far from sure that colour does affect heart rate and, if it does, the effects are probably tiny. And yet we can read statements like this all over the internet as if it is a fact beyond doubt. Other things she says that I take with a pinch of salt is that “green does not cause eye fatigue” and that “yellow triggers innovation.” Don’t get me wrong – I am very interested in how colour can be used to affect us emotionally, psychologically and behaviourally; it’s just there is a danger that if some things are said often enough (such as red increases your blood pressure or heart rate) then people start believing them even though there may be little evidence.

That said, you might find the infographic fun and it is well done. See the original and full article here.

colour and branding

culture, design, knowledge, opinions/rants, , , , ,

mcdonalds

According to Jon Feagain colour affects brand development in five ways:

    It helps boost perception

    It attracts attention

    It can help to emphasise or conceal information

    It can help you appeal to the right audience

    It can can help the audience digest information better

I think all of these things are true. However, to make the right decisions a good understanding of colour semiotics is critical in my opinion. Achieving that is easier said than done.

grab colour – use it

design, news, opinions/rants, technology, , , , , , ,

colour pen

Many of you will have seen the Scribble Pen which uses a colour sensor to detect colours. The sensor is embedded at the end of the pen opposite the nib. The pen then mixes the required coloured ink (cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black) for drawing, using small refillable ink cartridges that fit inside its body. The device can hold 100,000 unique colours in its internal memory and can reproduce over 16 million unique colours.

But wait. Don’t think that means you will be able to use the pen to write in 16 million different colours. You won’t. A typical phone screen can display about 16 million unique combinations of RGB (red, green and blue). But many of the RGB combinations are indistinguishable. Open up powerpoint and make two squares. Set the RGB values of one to [10 220 10] and of the other to [10 220 11]. I would be amazed if you could really tell the difference between them. And anyone who has read much of my blog will know that I believe that if two colours look the same then they are the same. So the pen might be able to create 16 million combinations of cyan, magenta, yellow, white, and black – but that doesn’t mean 16 million different colours.

The second problem is that just because your pen can grab a colour (using its sensor) doesn’t mean it can create it. There are lots of colours out there in the world that are outside the colour gamut of an ink-based system (even one using five primaries – cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black).

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2647129/Forget-crayons-Multicolour-pen-lets-pick-colour-draw-16-million-shades.html#ixzz35gJ0racJ
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colour and brand identity

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union-jewellery-boxes

Just read a really informative article by David Airey – an independent brand identity designer – about colour and brand identity. In his article David reiterates some ideas I heard from Laura Hussey in Design Week (and recently blogged about); that is that some companies such as Oxfam and The Guardian are rebranding with a rainbow colour palette. As David writes: “Multiple colours speak of choice, variety and diversity. Think Google, NBC, eBay, or MSN to name but a few that use more than two colours to express their breadth.”

However, David’s post goes further to describe some of his own work with Halcyon coffee and the use of a range of different colours: “The colours used within the brand and environment were derived from, and act as a subtle nod towards the diverse colour palette used during Britain’s great creative periods of the past — our Halcyon days, mixed with those we see around us today.” Definitely worth having a read of David’s article

School of Design hosts Leeds Sustainability Jam 2013

design, fun, news,

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The weekend of the 22nd November saw the school of Design host the Leeds Sustainability Jam 2013, part of the Global Sustainability Jam taking place simultaneously across the world. A “Design Jam” is similar in concept to a Jam session in music: people come together, bringing their instruments, skills, and open-mindedness. Someone sets up a theme, and everyone starts to Jam around it and together you build something which none of you could have built alone.

The Leeds Sustainability Jam involved a gathering of students and non-students from different areas of study, research, cultures and experiences. The design-based approach to creativity enabled everyone to participate in the discussion of sustainability and consider the environmental, social and economic aspects. Throughout the weekend the emphasis was on “not just talking but actually doing”. By the end of Sunday the teams had turned their ideas into concrete designs or plans of action which could be shared with the global design network and then realistically put into action the next day.

The resulting projects from the Leeds teams included “Be a good Bean”; a network of sustainably sourced local suppliers all connected by a cup, “The Food Experience”; a system of events making lunchtime an experience to enjoy, reconnecting people with the idea of food as being an experience in itself, and “Walk-in Wardrobe”; a university clothes sharing scheme, initially starting with jumpers, where people get to rethink their perception of fashion, consumerism and ownership.

It is now up to the teams to implement these projects across the University campus and local community!

For more information on the projects and the list of Sponsors follow the links:

BLOG: http://jaminleeds.tumblr.com
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/jaminleeds
TWITTER: @jamin_leeds

Eat red, eat less

culture, design, nature, news, , , , , , , , , ,

Eat_red2

It used to be thought that blue was an appetite suppressant because blue foods are rare and sometimes poisonous. But I have always doubted this and wrote about it near three years ago on this blog. And then nearly two years ago I posted about research from the University of Basel (Switzerland) and the University of Mannheim (Germany) in which it was shown that participants drank less from a red cup than a blue cup and ate less snack food from a red plate than from a blue plate. In other words, the opposite of what was commonly believed. Today I read in CNN about work by Nicola Bruno, a cognitive psychologist from the University of Parma, about his research to measure how much food or hand cream people used when presented on plates of different colours (red, white or blue). The food and hand cream was available to be used freely whilst participants took part in a survey. People ate less food and used less hand cream when either was presented on a red plate. However, the authors note that in their experiment the participants were unaware of the experiment – so it is not so straight forward to extrapolate and conclude that if you buy red plates for home you would eat less. Because then you would be conscious of the idea and it might not work. On the other hand, it might!!

It was nice for me to hear this story and it reminded me of when Nicola came to visit me (when I worked at Keele University) and we published a paper together. That was in about 2000 and I don’t think I have seen him since. Sometimes it isn’t a small world. But it was nice to come across him again anyway.