Does anyone know of any forums involving color theory?
I know some of you coders out there could care less:D but I teach some local classes about it, and I'm looking to see if there are any other dorks like me on the net that have these same discussions such as:
Color Managment/Calibration
Psychology implications
Color Diseases
Case Studies for corporations
Good for web designers, good for print designers -- Amazon.com spends too much money consulting with color professionals (to make sure that the products you purchase look as similiar as possible on monitors to the web), MS, Apple... yadda, yadda.
From the Case Studies it has saved millions and improved sales (and hits) for many companies, so it's a needed thing. However, without reading on it and understanding the technical jargon, it often sounds more like Qauckery... until you see what it can do.
Back a few years, my art teacher held a lecture about that - she showed us the results of four different studies and two meta-studies. The results were about these:
- Bright, clear yellow/orange/red have a consistent effect of making people more awake.
- Likewise, clear blue (and to a lesser extent green and even lesser the colours in between) has a calming effect. They also bring a distance to the viewer.
- Dull/grayish colours have far less effect than clear colours, especially in the case of red.
The meta studies showed that all colour combination and colour clearness effects on the human mind seems to be culturally, not genetically, coded.
The effect of brightness seems to be universal, but not related directly to the "colours" white and black, though.
Oh, then there were one of the studies discussing the contrast vision. We are able to distinguish far more shades of the spectrum from green toward yellow than any other spectrum.
True -- and those are the types of things I lecture about as well -- I'm just wondering if there are forums we're people can discuss online about these issues, not just one thread:)
And, you're lecturer is right:
Microsoft paid (can't think of his name) a color consultant in Chicago a huge some of money to figure out why so many accidents were occuring in their plant. He changed the wall coloring to green, which added to depth perception, and accidents dropped a margin of 75% within one month.
There's a ton of them, and I appreciate the insight -- but I was looking more for forums that I can discuss this with other people who are interested and other professionals in the field like me.
Hell I'd do it here, but I don't think everyone has a need for it here.
I heard red helps to induce hunger, which is why alot of candy uses it.
:) I've heard that too. It is said to use 'natural' colors when designing food labels/coverings/logos -- it makes the products seem more enticing and real. Blue would not be overly appealing to the stomach, and is recommended to not be used.
Hmmm, I think I'm going to start my own print web design forum with discussions for spacial relationship, layout, color theory, typography, you name it... could get a few hundred of my designer buddies to sign up, and it doesn't seem to be out there. And nobody here has seemed to know of one...
well there is already the general web building and graphic forums up? tell me if you do go theough with it though.
Yeah, the general web building is too 'general'... I'll work on it over the week and keep you posted if you'd like > not a problem.
Ok I am not just a techno geek, I am also working on my masters in cognitive psychology hehe. Anyways a really good book that I read about a year ago written by Joseph LeDoux, titled The Emotional Brain. In his book he has done acutal research studies on why people pick certain things. One of his studies pertained to socks, he had a manufacturer use the same brand of socks and color them differently, people picked different colors for different reasons. It goes on and on about it and other studies as well, fascinating book.
But without putting everyone here to sleep, there is a definate science to color schemas for web programming, there is also studies that have proven when a web page loads 98% of those people studied their eyes went to the top right hand corner of the screen, approximately 1 1/4 inches down from the top, and 1 1/2 inches from the right side of the screen to the left. I believe it was Stanford Univeristy, or GaTech that did that study.
Another good place for you to go find information about this stuff is to pick up a psychology today magazine and browse through it and see if there is anything in there.
Hope I didn't bore you guys too much, and I hope this information was helpful.
No it wasn't boring, that was great information -- however this topic was not a discussion about tidbits color theory as many people seem to be thinking, as I am not looking for a specific discussion of information...
Rather I'm trying to see if there are any user forums for other professionals in this industry where I can discuss these issues with. As I said before, I have and do teach it, so I'm just looking for a forum that will openly discuss it with other people who are interested.:D