September, 2006

Color Association by Culture

by William Pacino, STC-NNE (Northern New England) Chapter

The essence of effective communication is simplicity: the simpler the code (the presentation of the message), the easier it is to comprehend the meaning/content of the message.

Color (or colour for international audiences) is very effective in delivering various messages. However, be careful of the cultural conversion of color that can turn information into something not intended.

In this essay, I will try to work through the cultural meanings of color and then I will present some ways to use color in technical documentation.

What is color?

Color is far more complex than one might imagine. Realize that color is not a property of light but rather a property of the brain/mind. After all, light is not necessary to experience color. Although every physical aspect of visible light can be measured precisely in wavelengths, candelas, lumens, and lamberts, the psychological aspects of color are less easily explained.

For example, in mythology and history, the color red is the color of fire and blood. Blood and fire have both positive and negative connotations. Bloodshed, aggression, war and hate on one side, and love, warmth, and compassion on the other side.

Blue is the color of sky and water. Blue invokes dreamlike states and has a calming effect.

Green is the color of life, of plants and of spring. Green is the color of seasonal renewal.

Yellow is associated with sunshine, knowledge and flourishing of all living creatures, but also of autumn and maturity.

A well-known story of cultural indifference involves the General Motors Company trying to sell an American car called Nova (definition, a new star, usually appearing suddenly) in Latin America. In the Spanish language, which is more prevalent in Latin America than the English language, “no va” means “no go”. Getting through the history quickly, trying to sell an automobile called “No go” was not a successful task.

The same type of cultural indifference can take place with the use of color, particularly if the color is hard-coded into documents that originate in the U.S. and then get exported to other countries and cultures. Color can be used in text (not always the best idea) as well as menus, windows and dialog boxes. In all circumstances, it is important to use color as a help, not a barrier.

Various meanings of color

As expected, there are huge differences across cultures in the symbolism associated with colors.

In the United States, wedding colors are white and funeral colors are black.

In Asian countries where the religions Buddhism and Taoism are prevalent, orange and yellows are spiritual colors as well as colors for funerals. In Eastern cultures, red combined with white signifies joy. In Eastern cultures, white is associated with mourning or death.

In India where the religion Hinduism is more prevalent, the god Shiva (“the Destroyer”) is associated with the color red, Vishnu (“the Preserver” of the universe representing mercy and goodness) is associated with black, Krishna (“the union of existence and bliss”) is associated with blue, and Brahma (“the Creator”) is associated with white.

Color/Colour Association by Culture

* Note: Blue is often considered a globally safe color

In 1947, Max Luscher, a professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland complied the following associative value of colors throughout Europe and United States.

In 1971, the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) was passed into law. OSHA uses color-coding to warn workers of occupational hazards.

What is color good for?

Use color with a specific goal in mind. Color can shape what the reader sees, feels and remembers, since color is a nonverbal experience. Here are a number of uses of color:

• Convey meaning such as warning (red), caution (yellow), safety (green), etc. However do not forget that associations of color and meaning can be culture-specific.
• Change perception of space
  
  Color can create a perception of 3-D space. Mountains off in the distance usually appear blue-violet and indistinct. The eye automatically interprets blue/violet and loss of sharpness as signs of distance. Conversely, colors such as red, yellow and orange appear closer.

• Change apparent size
  
  Brightly colored objects generally appear larger than dark ones of equal size. For example, people will judge yellow larger than blue.

• Show similarities and differences
  
  Hue, which refers to the gradation of color within the optical (visible) spectrum of light, is good for showing distinctions between same or different sets of information. The information within a particular cluster of hue gives the reader the necessary clues to quickly and easily judge the information as being the same or different. This makes color an ideal way to signal that objects have similar or different meanings, functions or importance.

• Chunk visual information/ Link spatially separated objects together
  
  Good design will use color to save the reader from thinking too much. Color perception is fast, accurate, automatic, and effortless. Thinking means reading/interpreting text, attaching meaning to an icon and searching memory for patterns. These activities are relatively slow, error-prone, require mental resources and effort and take time to learn. How many times have you misread a word? Probably often. How many times have you mistakenly seen blue as orange? Never.

• Attract attention
  
  Using color, the reader can be automatically drawn to specific chunks of information, without needing to first scan and interpret the information and then move to the right starting location.

• Create emphasis
  
  One of color’s principal uses is to signal to the reader that some information is more important than other information. Emphasis is created by: more size; more saturation (Saturation measures the vibrancy or purity of a color. A pure color has no gray mixed in with it. Saturation is measured in percent, ranging from 0% for no saturation, to 100% for full saturation/pure color.); and, more brightness.

William Pacino currently works as a solo technical writer in a start-up optical telecommunications company. He is a Senior member of the Northern New England STC chapter and lives in Chelmsford, MA. He can be reached at william.pacino@verizon.net.

This article originally appeared in the July-August 2006 issue of The Nor'Easter, the newsletter of the STC-Northern New England Chapter.

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