Author: Curtis Newbold

In addition to using color to affect emotions, you can actually explore ways in which color affects how people act and react to information. Research in the way color affects physical behaviors is a relatively new area of study and researchers aren’t always sure which colors will affect which actions.

If your goal is to persuade, motivate, engage, or inspire people, then, in many ways, your goal is to better understand the psychology behind what causes people to feel the way they do. Reserach has repeatedly shown that color—among other factors, of course—can have a profound impact on people’s emotions.

The intensity, brightness, and schematic combinations of colors affect the way people will feel about and interact with your information. When you appropriately match the color of your document to the intended ambiance of your message, people will be far more likely to react to it in the way you

Any time you approach color in a design, ask yourself if the color you are using meets common conventions and expectations. While many designs will offer you a free reign of color choices and palates, some colors really ought to be used for specific purposes. In certain industries, cultures, companies,

Color has the tremendous ability to draw attention, aestheticize, create meaning, and give emphasis. To effectively do any of those four, though, you have to be strategic about creating harmonies and relationships. Sometimes the relationship can be contrasting or jarring, but if done intentionally, the contrasting relationship can give meaning

Color is complex and would require a lenghty scientific discussion about wavelengths and prisms and reflective light to really grasp how it works. But truthfully, for the average information designer, knowing the complex science of color and how the brain perceives it isn’t all that critical, even if it is

You may have heard about a little trend lately to ban PowerPoint from businesses. Most notably, Jeff Bezos banned PowerPoint from meetings at Amazon, in favor of replacing them with…”briefing documents.” Geoffrey James at Inc.com supported this silly move, citing research about how PowerPoint reduces organizational intelligence. That’s when I

Once you have a firm grasp on common color terminology and on how the color wheel works, explore how different colors can affect the mood, emphasis, and overall effectiveness of the same content. Always be strategic about the colors you are using, as they will significantly affect how people react

The color wheel is one of the most important tools you can use to develop color schemes and, by association, moods and experiences for the people using your information. Once you recognize how the color wheel works, you can pair colors, shades, and tints in ways that evoke the specific