Colorful thoughts

This week I read a claim that, incredibly, 80 percent of an object’s message is communicated through its color (ahh, the 80-20 rule). There is no doubt that color is an influential element of design. After this unit, I feel more confident spinning that color wheel and applying hues, tints and shades with the goal of creating more organized, harmonious and effective educational visuals.

For the past five years I’ve coordinated our school’s visiting author program. I put up displays, posters and bulletin boards to create anticipation for the event. I agonize over which colors to use, and I usually seek out a trusted instructional assistant for her advice in color selection. Sometimes I try to apply a logical, reasoned approach. For instance, author Andrea Cheng features the Chinese culture in many of her books for children. So for her visit, I put up a bulletin board with red background and yellow lettering with black shadow . That worked. First because red and yellow are often used in Chinese celebrations, and second because from the design perspective, they are both primary colors, and it’s an elementary school where the young kids are attracted to those fun, saturated colors. In all reality, sometimes the color choices are predicated by what’s on-hand in the supply room. Last year for Patricia Polacco’s bulletin board, I kept the bright blue paper that was already up and added yellow letters.

This year colors selection will be a whole new ballgame, because now I’ll be making the displays for 5th and 6th grade students at the intermediate school. The school colors are green and gold, so I might try shades of green including sage green with gold and more saturated hues used as accent colors. Blue, ultramarine and orange are other possibilities. I think I will try Lidwell’s suggestion of cooler colors for background and warmer colors for foreground. I’m not dreading color selection this time around quite so much.

Another principle I’ll try to apply to my next bulletin board is the Rule of Thirds. I’ll think about placing focal points at the intersections of the four lines dividing the space into a tic-tac-toe board. When I think about the Rule of Thirds, the cover of Click, Clack, Moo, illustrated by Betsy Lewin comes to mind as a good example. (Ted and Betsy Lewin, both Caldecott honor winners, visited our school three years ago!)

Last week when I got my driver’s license renewed, I was surprised that the colorblindness test is no longer required. That reminded me that in designing visuals, it is important not to put red and green close together and definitely not to place green type on a red background, because 10% of the male population is colorblind. A quick trip to the BMV website shows that now, in Ohio, only those applying for school bus driver's license are required to be able to name the colors on signs.

This leads me to another color-related question – why do we talk about the yellow school bus, when to me the buses look more tangerine-yellow? According to Wikipedia, in 1939, there was a national convention to establish standards for school buses including dimensions and color. That yellow-orange color was specially formulated to be used on school buses because against that background, black letters can most easily be read in the dim light of the early morning hours. Legibility is important for educational visuals, too. The experts say that black on yellow is easiest to read. The next most legible combination is green, red or blue on white; then white on blue; next best is black on white; then yellow on black.

Cultural beliefs and associations have a huge impact on our reactions to color. Thanks for assigning the reading about the color green, Dan. It gave me insight and understanding about my great-great grandmother’s emerald green wedding veil (circa 1835, Tiffin, OH). I must admit that for a long time I thought it might be a curtain and questioned my grandmother's handwritten notes on the box. Might be some truth to the association of green to fertility, because she had a dozen children!

I must admit that I go back a long ways with the Teletubbies. My daughter was one when the show premiered ten years ago, and she was a fan. I was surprised to see the little guys featured twice in Lidwell! First in connection with the baby-face bias: People are drawn to babies – baby animals, baby humans and things with baby characteristics of round features, big eyes, and a high forehead. Maybe that’s why VW beetle drivers get quite attached to their cars, decorating them, giving them names like "Herbie" and placing bouquets of flowers in the steering wheels? Though there may be this attraction, people with baby faces do seem to be passed up when it comes time to hold positions of great responsibility.


I have been trying to use color theory to explain why the Tubbies are violet, lime-green, yellow and red. The red and yellow are cheery, fun, warm, saturated primary colors to attract children’s attention. Red and violet are analogous colors found next to each other on the color wheel and lime-green is analogous to yellow. Could it be as simple as red and green as well as purple and yellow are complementary colors? Anyway, the combination works and they look harmonious together. The color choice might have been a process of elimination. I think if one Tubby had been orange, they might have looked like a box of crayons bunching on the color spectrum. The color blue might have been elminated because the Tubbies spend a fair amount of time outside against a blue sky and we talk about "feeling blue" and having the blues.

The Tubbies live on a calm peaceful savanna. I believe that most people do prefer a fairly uncluttered, uncomplicated space/ landscape. Perhaps that's part of the beauty of feng shui. Below is an image from http://www.musopen.com that has a soothing savanna effect on me. After this discussion, I'll be looking more at landscapes in children's picture books.

I thought it was interesting how many design principles Lidwell identifies as being innate biases, hard-wired into our brains e.g. archetypes, attractiveness bias, baby-face bias, savanna preference, golden triangle, most average facial appearance, and waist- to-hip ratio. However, Lidwell reject that color reaction is innate. I realize that culture and past association play a huge role in color perception and preference, but I think there could be a small genetic / evolutionary factor to color reaction, too. I read an article this week that proposed that there is a genetic influence because heredity affects serotonin, a neurotransmitter, that is released when a person sees and reacts to a particular color.

Now it's time to put it all together - color, type, contrast, alignment, repetition and proximity!