With all its inherent power and potential, its ability to polarize and magnetize, is color the killer app?
Unlike so many other elements that make up the visual dimensions of communication, color is the one that’s visceral in the extreme. It causes instant action and reaction, jogs the memory, and is loaded with meaning, regardless of whether its intended purpose is for function or purely for fashion.
Color’s effectiveness in this realm is due in great part to how deeply it’s connected to existence; from the basest survival instincts of an animal all the way to its ability to help attract people to both the animate and inanimate, the response to color seems somehow pre-programmed into the DNA of every living thing on the planet.
But when it comes to the commercial application of color, the natural order is often ignored. On products and in brand-specific communications, color finds itself at the whim of less than scientifically sound, almost wholly subjective considerations. Color can even—as in the artificially modified case illustrated opposite—be pushed too far in the name of differentiation.
With all its inherent power and potential, its ability to polarize and magnetize, is color the killer app? Or is it something that—when disrespected, underestimated, or misused—can kill at will, consuming your brand, your message, and your audience in one fell swoop?