#thinkingdesign

Color Psychology & Product Design

Color psychology in product design, and design, in general, is a no-brainer that should be part of what you do as a designer - especially if you’ve been to design school. What gets interesting is when we explore the nuances of subtle color differences, like browns for instance (think Hershey’s brown), and other colors that have to be spot-on or else they end up being oh-so-wrong. Getting the color right on screens is also more critical because today they are remarkably color accurate. 

Back in the old NTSC TV and early mac/windows days color was difficult to reproduce across devices — lots of manufacturers tried, and rarely succeeded. As a result, design color choices were often “stark” by comparison (i.e., Windows Blue). To differentiate was challenging. Some rose to the challenge and created styles, such as crunched backs, experimentation in silver nitrate film effects and more. Today color reproduction is more accurate across the board. From printed posters to billboards that project light at us from across the highway. 

It’s a whole new world for designers working with color. They say that having limiting factors is a good thing. So now that there are fewer color limiting factors, what will we do with all these color choices?