Colour Me Purple?

There seems to have been a spate of “Tests” cropping up on Facebook recently. By simply answering 10 questions you can now find out an extraordinary number of things about yourself, from the job you should be in to the health of your mind, how picky an eater you are and the hair colour you should have. This last is interesting, because it leads to another one…What’s the colour of your personality?

There are two questions here, one that we’ll mention and then move on from is the whole area of predictability and how obviously wrong we are to think of ourselves as being different and individual when 10 simple questions can pretty well define us…the second though, of our personalities having an associated colour, if true, has massive repercussions for anyone involved in the graphic side of marketing. For a start try visiting Bitecharge.com or their page on Facebook and doing the personality colour test. Then tell us that it isn’t true…

Moving swiftly on, scientists have been studying the way we react to colour for many years and what they’ve found is that each of us tends to react differently to different colours, some resonating with us more than others. Having said which each colour is also known to have a different frequency and it is those frequencies that can cause a common reaction in us.

Consider this: Who wouldn’t agree that the colour yellow has about it a warmth and optimism, surety and optimism.

Or that orange isn’t cheerful, optimistic and confident.

How about red? Can you sense excitement and boldness? Forsa Ferrari!

Let’s try purple. Does purple strike you as being a creative colour, wise and imaginative? It does to some.

And blue…trusting, strong, dependable…dare one say “manly”?

Green, obvious really, it’s all health, vitality, peace and growth.

Lastly for now, grey, silver: It’s balance and calm, rational, dependable.

So, do you see why Orange chose orange, why the broadsheets and Apple are silver and grey, Amex and Dell blue, Coke red…and do you see how important it is for any company to know about the use of colour when designing their new logo or marketing materials.

It’s subliminal marketing. It’s what Brand51 can do.