Reflection - This class was about the colours ability to maniple are thoughts and feelings about a brand, I found it very fascinating how the small alteration will dramatically affect the feelings. One thing that really stood out to me was that the paper the colour can also have an impact like the same Pantone colour but one on glossy paper and the other matt, making it clear how many different areas need to be considered.

We looked at the different colour systems and how that will effect the different products and one of the most Important areas a brands identity is consistency. CMYK is the colour system which is used by printers and is made up of the 4 colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. As a printing press is made up of 4 plates that layer each other to create the desired colour, it works by adding more colours the darker it gets as its subtractive colour system.

RGB is the colour system that is what screens are made up of like phones, tablets, and laptops, they are formed by 3 coloured light beams Red, Green, and Blue. As the colours are mixed they create white as the more colours you add the lighter you create and when nothing is added it creates black, it is an additive colour system.

The Pantone colour system is used by designers mostly as it can be used in printing as you can pick a specific colour that will be specific to your brand, and that colour will be able to be printers the same way every time with the colour code which ensures the consistency over all branding. They come in colour guides, each will be a different theme or on different paper to show the difference.

RAL colour system is mostly used for painting and powered colouring which was created by the German State Commission and stands for Reichsausschuß für Lieferbedingungen und Gütesicherung. It is mostly used in Europe and each colour is defined by its own 4 numbers, it has a very wide range of colours making it easy to use.

We had a quick look at colour schemes, Monochromatic - the same colour in different shades the same hue but different levels of light. They are to create confidence, calmness, and be reliable. Analogous - different colours but beside each other on the colour wheel, they make you feel balanced, relaxed, and happy. Complementary - colours that are opposite each other on the wheel, so they create a lot of visual interest but balanced and they are highly effective. Triad - colours that create the points of a triangle on the wheel, evenly spaced around it, they create a very exciting effect that's fun and happy.

Emotions and colours are tightly linked, and how different colours can create specific emotional responses is really useful to have an understanding of when creating your brand and what you want to associate with it. All colours have associated feelings like red with energy, love, and strength, blue is trust, peace, and loyalty, and yellow is creativity, happiness, and warmth. These meanings may be very different in other places in the world as they are formed from the culture of a place. Most bank brands go to blue for what it represents which would be effective, but as a result, the market is oversubscribed with blue bank brands. For my own bank brand, I will have to consider the energy I want it to represent to get the right target audience of university students.

There is a study that compared the different reactions between Northern European and Northeast Asian people when it comes to product designs and the results some that the two cultures react very differently to the colour choice on products, interesting they also found that Europeans read left to right and top to bottom when Northeast Asians read vertically from top to bottom but horizontally however they prefer pictures and symbolism overwriting. The colour that had the most positive response from each group was yellow for North Europeans and blue for Northeast Asians, this was a really interesting study and it highlights the differences between cultures especially when it comes to colour

The Effect of Culture on the Perception of Product Packaging: A Multimethod Cross-Cultural Study

Kerli Ploom, Kristian Pentus, Andres Kuusik and Urmas Varblane

Date: May 1, 2020

https://eds.p.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=14&sid=77da637b-2dc0-4338-85e3-9af66a6f6fb4%40redis

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