→April 9, 2010
I recently checked out a book titled, The Childs Creation of A Pictorial World, which explains various moods and feelings of children based solely on color choice. Author Claire Golomb explains how children use certain colors and various shapes for certain emotions (angry, sad, etc.). I was very intrigued why, for example, kids will draw in red to show anger even if they have never been exposed to what the color is conventionally used for.
As designers, one of the most crucial things we do is communicate. Just as we develop a verbal language to understand each other, graphic design has its own unique vocabulary and set of rules (that many of us love to break). The world around us heavily influences the way we feel and what we design. For example, hospital walls are painted in calming and muted colors, such as grey or green, so patients are relaxed when being attended to. If hospital walls are more fulvous, patients are more likely to feel uncomfortable and anxious. From these simple examples, there is a clear connection between color and emotion; however, it is the anatomical reasoning that helps to decipher why.
To understand how attitudes are formed, it is vital to first understand the creative mind. According to Craig Grannell and Paul Birch of Computer Arts Magazine, “Most definitive statements you hear about the mind and brain are wrong.” Very few people are capable of clearly giving an explanation of how the brain works. What we do know is that our brain is divided into two separate halves. The left side of the brain controls the logical, verbal, sequential, and numerical thinking, while the right manages arts and holistic thinking. The brain is filled with billions upon billions of cells that organize thoughts.
Color and shape affect us and our emotions before we can express ourselves through drawing or speaking. Children learn depending on their culture and from what they see around them, from how others react to what is around them, from TV, and from all the unconscious signals that we send out as we negotiate and respond to the world. The Child’s Creation of a Pictorial World explores the relationship between affect and color-choice in children’s drawings. In Golomb’s first task, she asked children (175 elementary school children at each of the six grade levels) to draw a happy, sad, and angry child. On the second assignment, Golomb asked the children to draw a happy dream and a frightening one. Most of the children used the same color to depict the same feeling at each of the three different mood states. However, as grade level progressed, the percent of children using the same color to depict the same mood diminished. The first graders used purple to show happiness, blue to show sadness, and red to depict anger. Yet, the sixth graders chose blue to represent happy, sad, and angry. This is probable because as we get older, we are culturally expanding ourselves.
Emotion is not solely expressed by color, but also by shape. Experience proves to us that shapes that are rounded and soft edged don’t hurt and are more likely to be associated with human comfort, and shapes like triangles and things with sharp corners and angles can hurt. Interesting enough, studies have said that an infant recognizes a human face before anything else. Less knowledge is required to know and understand what a human face normally looks like from an infant’s point of view (i.e. a large circle, and inside, two smaller circles).
As the brain develops, so does our understanding of happiness within the human face. In Golomb’s experiment, older children were found to have expanded on the upward curved mouth and had turned it into a two-dimensional heart-shaped mouth. Third graders drew semicircles and diagonal slashed lines to represent different emotions, and only 10 percent of first graders drew a tear to represent sadness, as opposed to 50 percent of third graders. The study of color and shape did not stop at the early ages, but continued on to higher education.
The Psychology of Color and Design, written by Deborah T. Sharpe, contains a chapter in which the relation of color and personality are compared to the association of color with college students. Similar to the 6th graders, many of the college students used identical colors to show the same emotions. There is a generality among these students within the warm spectrum (red, yellow, orange) that relates these colors to excitement and stimulation, whereas the cool end (blue and green) expresses restfulness and tranquility. Research findings “point very strongly to a basic commonality of color preferences among individuals.” says Guilford, an American psychologist. It’s with this information that we begin to understand the links that we as a culture, as individuals, and as a people make with color, mood, and shape.
We can study this question for years on end, yet there is a great possibility that there will be no single universal answer as to why color and shape affect us independently. Answers will vary depending on cultures, beliefs, traditions, and any other reasons that influence us. Some individuals have spent their entire professional lives studying the effects of colors within a single shape. This may be a great wonder that never has a definite answer.
Extra Linkage
You can read Claire Golomb’s, The Child’s Creation of a Pictorial World in its entirety available here.
Buy The Child’s Creation of a Pictorial World on Amazon.
Buy The Psychology of Color and Design on Amazon.
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