Here is a sign I see at least three times a week so I can’t image why I haven’t blogged about it before this.
Can you guess where this is posted?
This sign is just outside of the door to the studio where I practice Bikram hot yoga.
When I first saw the sign I wondered what the owner had heard or been told. I suspected that he might be under the impression that the color green would in some way have a negative effect on the participants. I couldn’t even imagine what tidbit of color knowledge might have been misinterpreted to arrive at such a thought.
Naturally I questioned him ready for an explanation that vaguely referenced some scientific or psychological studies but boy was I off target. There was a much simpler answer.
Bikram doesn’t like the color green! At some time in his past there was some tragic event that he associates with the color and doesn’t want to be reminded of it. Who can blame him?
The studio owner said he respected his feelings and didn’t allow his students to wear green or use green towels or mats just in case Bikram dropped by the studio unexpectedly.
Now every time I see this sign it reminds to me of how strong our associations with particular colors can be. Sometimes the memories and feelings a color evokes are very pleasant and sometimes not so pleasant but in either case they can have a long reaching effect on how we respond to that color.
Whether working with an executive making color decisions for his company or an individual picking color for a home or wardrobe you need to always be aware that even if not stated as boldly as it is in my yoga studio personal color memories can effect how someone feels about a color and thus their decisions about it.
Also be aware of your own color associations. Color professionals need to be conscious that their own color history is at play and keep those thoughts at bay when evaluating colors for a client.
Can you share any examples of how color memories have influenced you?
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Chinese use icons to show Olympic support
Chinese Web users, stung by international criticism of China ahead of the Beijing Olympics, have splashed red across the Internet by adding hearts and “CHINA” to their names when chatting online in a show of support.
Several Reuters reporters’ contact lists for online chat programs, such as Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, steadily filled up with red hearts during the day, though opinions differed as to what, exactly, the symbol signified.
Continue reading at globeandmail.com
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How Starbucks is using a special brown logo to evoke the chain’s beginnings and restore some goodwill for the brand
The new old logo: Starbucks is temporarily using a sanitized version of its original branding on new packaging.
Brown is certainly a color that communicates coffee. So, when you order a cup of the new Pike Place coffee at Starbucks this week, it doesn’t seem out of place to see a special brown logo on the cup and paper sleeve. Except that, as everyone knows, Starbucks’ iconic logo is green. So why change such a successful corporate symbol?
The image of the twin-tailed mermaid inside the brown medallion harkens back to the chain’s 1971 beginnings. The logo has evolved over the years, going from brown to green in 1987.
This is the second time in three years Starbucks has trotted out the brown mermaid, inspired by a Norse woodcut. Back in 2006, she was resurrected to mark the chain’s 35th anniversary. This time, she is a messenger…Read the whole story on BusinessWeek.com
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The organizers of The Colour Orange campaign will use the Olympics in Beijing 2008 to visually put focus on China’s violations of human rights.
“We will use the colour orange and make it a symbol of the protest against the human rights violations in China. Due to the strict censorship it will be practically impossible for sportspeople and spectators to get into the stadium with obvious symbols in form of text or pictures. But no authority will be able to ban the colour orange, although it is obvious for everybody that it expresses a conspicuous accusation against the human rights violations in China
It is the Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot and his art workshop (Art in Defence of Humanism, AIDOH www.aidoh.dk) that is behind the ‘Colour Orange’ project.
Galschiot thinks of art as nonverbal communication and he often uses his art to make international art happenings to place focus on defenders of humanism. He usually uses his sculptures as artistic manifestations, but as a result of the extremely limited Freedom of Speech at the Olympics in 2008, he has chosen the colour orange. He funds his art events himself mainly through the sale of bronze sculptures to art collectors and he is therefore completely independent from political, economic and religious interests.
Jens Galschiot says: “This is not really a campaign in the traditional sense. The project has to work as a catalyst for some kind of wave or feeling that repeats itself over and over again and that flushes all over the world.”
The project will, through its own dynamics, function as what Joseph Beuys has called a “Gesamtkunstwerk” in which the distinction between the artist, the art itself and the viewer has become blurred. Everybody becomes part of the art.
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