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Choosing Color

How are you feeling right now? What are you thinking?

Are you suddenly excited and passionate, yearning for adventure? 

Or did a Zen-like calmness just pervade your being?
 
Maybe your mind is on money. Or, if not that, you’re considering your health and how you can live in harmony with the natural world. 

On the contrary, you say? You were simply entertaining thoughts of fun, youth, and celebration, but now, for some strange reason, are more focused on fantasies of royalty and luxury? 

Fantasies that are quickly dispelled by new thoughts of an earthy, tribal simplicity? 

So just what’s going on here?! And why am I suddenly feeling so curious and amused, but annoyed by eye-strain?!

Effects of Color on the Mind

Let us fade back to black for its capacity to imbue some seriousness to a hue. What the above examples represent are the psychology of color and the well-established fact that, while there is definitely an element of subjectivity here, most of us associate certain emotions with certain shades in ways that can be measured and manipulated. It’s not a new insight.

In fact, using colors to alter our psychological and physical states is an old practice – a very old practice. Both ancient Egypt and China employed chromotherapy, a treatment in which the patient was placed in a brightly colored room depending upon the “doctor’s” diagnosis.

Got a patient who needs better circulation? Put her in the red room. Got someone who needs to purify his body? He’ll go in the yellow room, thank you. Got a guy that needs to heal his lungs and increase his energy levels? To the orange room with him, please. (Chromotherapy sounds primitive to us 21st century types, but, personally, I’d take it over leeches and a mercury-laced tincture any day.)

Understanding & Using Color in Branding is a post from: GoMediaZine