An exploration into colour symbolism as used by - National Centre ...

effect, you would probably choose a tea packaged in a pale green box over the variety
packaged in a bright red box. The associations that we automatically make with certain
colours have been learned over a period of time and ingrained into our culture, and as such are
inherently difficult to disregard.
As visual artists we need to think about how colour affects the impact of our work: does it
reflect our cultural background and the message that we are trying to communicate Who is
our intended audience, and will they be able to interpret our intended message correctly,
based on their own understanding of colour symbolism
As artists and designers we have control over what our audience sees, and we need to be
aware that, unless we are careful, we may be sending the wrong messages because of the
influence that we can have over the way that they respond (Freisner 2000). An example of the
way that the inappropriate use of colour can have the completely wrong effect on an audience
is the original design of the signs at the Euro Disney theme park. The bright colour scheme
was meant to visually compete with the red used by Coca Cola, and the colour purple featured
prominently. However this turned out to be a serious error because much of Europe is
Catholic, and as such purple is a symbol of death and the Crucifixion. It then emerged that the
only reason the colour was chosen in the first place was because the CEO liked purple (Anon
27/3/06). It is therefore to be seen that the consideration of how colours are used is
particularly important when dealing with media that potentially will be viewed all over the
world, such as films or websites.
When dealing with media viewed on computers it is also necessary to take into account the
way that there is an extremely wide variation in the way that monitors are calibrated. Thus if a
©Laura Dilloway, NCCA 2006 31