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Color Counts

© Nancy A. Locke

While on a technical writing assigment in Cangzhou in the People's Republic of China, I blundered into a wedding reception. The company car had departed and my interpreter, also a woman, and I were obliged to eat dinner in the hotel's restaurant which, that evening, was filled with men only awaiting the arrival of the new couple. They soon arrived on a very small scooter, the husband driving, the wife sitting side-saddle and holding tight, dressed in a red silk dress.

The red wedding dress was only the first in an evening of cross-cultural revelations for invited and uninvited guests. As usual, my inadvertant hosts put us at ease with a surfeit of grace and generosity.

Color conveys meaning as surely as form and text. Depending on the culture, however, the same color can convey a different sometimes diametrically opposed meaning. Traditionally, red is a joyful color in China and the color of brides; unrelieved white denotes mourning. In many Western cultures, spotless white signifies purity and, traditionally, has been the color of brides; saturated red in certain contexts can mean quite the opposite.

Choosing appropriate colors to convey meaning is a primary responsibility of the graphic designer. Indeed, color is an essential element in a company's graphic signature and identifies a company as succintly as flags identify a country. Think IBM blue, the golden arches of MacDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts pink, Coca Cola red and IHOP orange. Think of almost any company—large or small, consumer or B2B—and you can usually associate a color with it.

To reach a desired audience, many factors must be considered when choosing colors: age, income level, gender, and the essential nature of the "message". The larger and more diverse the audience, the more complicated the choice becomes. Choosing colors to satisfy a global audience can be a mind-boggling undertaking. Visit the Web of Culture page devoted to color and you'll quickly get the idea.

According to the page's table, yellow can signify "visibility, cautionary, happy, sunny, cowardice" and that's just in the U.S. and Canada. In Argentina, the color can also suggest wealth, religion and ceremony. In Western Europe yellow might mean quality among other things. Yellow connotes visibility and rubber in the British Isles and persecution in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Web designer Molly E. Holzschlag interviewed Jill Morton, a professor at the University of Hawaii and a color expert, for an article published by Web Techniques (September 2000). Morton acknowledged the difficulty of choosing color for a global audience. She identified blue as a fairly safe color and

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