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:
