The
Art and Science of Color
Using color to jumpstart your catalog’s performance
Color theory is something that most designers are not exposed to today.
As color can be a most powerful tool to show off your merchandise and
attract prospects into considering purchase from your catalog or site,
it’s time your creative department become better acquainted with
the use of color.
When you think of it, the cost of printing your catalog with poor color
choices, or no color choices, does not change from the cost of printing
a catalog that has the best color for your market. That being the case,
it costs you NOTHING to make your catalog creative more powerful when
you utilize color better!
The way color is used, particularly on your covers can make or break the
success of your catalog. Even inside the catalog, color can create a shift
in how people read, what they see first, and even how they perceive your
brand. The right color elements can make your merchandise look elegant
and valuable, while the wrong color – or too much or too little
– can make it look cheesy or just plain unappealing.
Consider the power of blue in American Express… the famous light
turquoise that says “Tiffany”… Fedex’s warm red
and violet-blue, and Mary Kay’s signature pink. These colors in
themselves tell the consumer about who the companies are, what they stand
for.
How does color work to show off a product?
Color is relative, and it’s somewhat subjective. It changes the
perception of everything around it, and it is effected by the other things
on the page. This is the way the cones of the eye work – it’s
not taste or judgment, it’s physiology.
An example of how this works is this: If you surround a color item with
more of the same family of color, it no longer ‘pops’ –
because the eye works to hold them all together.
Consider the a typical SALE flyers we’ve all seen. It’s typical
to make half the type on the flyer red, to make it really grab attention.
But have you ever noticed that by the time there is that much red type
on the page, it no longer shouts the same way as it would if they had
used mostly black, with just a big red headline? The eye notices what
is different, and it notices contrast… so too much red makes it
more benign than just a little bit of red.
Another example is a catalog spread I recently critiqued, where the product
that was being shown off was pink – and the background of the spread
was very carefully chosen to be the same pink. Then on the insets, the
tablecloths were pink too. The entire spread became a sea of pink, and
the key product disappeared on the page.
So to show off a product’s color, you can’t use more of the
same color, because it becomes anticlimactic – they eye adjusts
to the color and the merchandise disappears in more of the same color.
To get drama or at least that little ‘ziingg’ you want, you
need to consider another color strategy.
Perhaps it would be the concept of complementary colors (opposite each
other on the ‘color wheel’), or warm versus cool colors, or
something that makes the product really pop with excitement on the page.
If you’ve never seen a color wheel to understand complementary colors,
here are a few examples:
Color
Its complement
RED GREEN
BLUE ORANGE
YELLOW VIOLET
MAGENTA LIME GREEN (YELLOW-GREEN)
PURE CYAN REDDISH ORANGE
In the case described with the pink items, it might mean picking up a
pale green for the background, or keeping the background white, or perhaps
pale yellow (the pink is cool, the yellow is warm) – and shoot one
item on a pale green cloth, shoot another element on pale yellow…
another on white… you get the picture. The main product shines by
its difference.
The Case of the Disappearing Headline!
Another phenomenon that is important to understand about color is how
equal ‘values’ work with, or against, each other. If the value,
or strength, of a color is on your page, and another color type is placed
in that color area that is the same value, the type ‘disappears’.
A prime example of this is when you see someone put ‘Christmas green’
type on a ‘Christmas red’ background. The colors ‘bounce’
against each other, but the type is impossible to read comfortably.
The only exception to this is in a full strength yellow, which is not
an impossible background when it comes to reading type. However it CAN
be an unpleasant one if too bright.
I just saw a catalog with a dark blue background and red type within the
block of color – nearly impossible to read. Now, you would think
that common sense would take over and if they artist didn’t notice
this, someone looking at proofs would have put the brakes on -- but often,
catalog writers and mangers don’t question the color judgment of
the artist.
This disappearing type phenomenon happens with lighter type and backgrounds
also. Again, contrast is your best friend in creating legibility and getting
attention.
By this example you can see that you must be prepared to direct designers
to change color when type can’t be read. Too few have the understanding
of legibility and comprehension to resist reversing type out or choosing
colors like that.
Color and your Market:
The color palette you choose for your catalog is most successful when
it’s driven by the psychographic profile of the recipient (psychographics
being the next level in from demographics – we’re talking
about social attitudes, affinities, and other personal characteristics).
But it also has to do with the attitude and mission of the catalog itself,
and about making your product look its best.
For example, most would think of a primary bright color palette (primary
red, blue and yellow) as a great kid’s catalog palette. However,
referring to the first part of this article, when all the items in the
catalog are colors like that, using those bright colors in large solids
distracts from how colorful the merchandise is. It’s like going
into a room with red walls, wearing a red sweater. In the white room,
you stood out. In the red room, you disappear.
So brightly colored toys among a primary color palette look kind of –
ordinary. Not a load of fun, which is what you want toys to look like.
A few years ago, when I did a kid’s wear catalog that had lots of
brightly colored clothing, I used brights ONLY for small accents, and
some of the darker brights as subhead type, in strong, easy to read font
styles. But the backgrounds were white for the most part, and a pale gold
hardwood floor that we used as our set to photoshoot. The clothing looked
brilliant!
Colors can reflect mood. Colors like pale blue, ivory, peach and pale
green are nurturing colors…but ironically, these are difficult for
older people (over 60) and many men to see. (There are statistics that
say that up to 70% of all men are slightly colorblind, due to genetics.
Women don’t need the same gene structure to see color fully, as
men do). So if you have a male audience, it’s best to use stronger
color for accents such as a small red logo or button that says SALE rather
than a pale blue one.
Colors like browns are nice “manly” colors -- but in fact,
UPS has spent a fortune convincing people through a branding campaign
that brown is good and high VALUE — since studies showed that people’s
perception of brown is pedestrian and cheap.
Blue is a nice solid color that works well in financial and other areas
including software. The Sharper Image has always used a lot of blue in
their presentations because it’s clean, masculine and strong. I’ve
used it successfully with the doctor’s market, as well.
Colors like gold are great for catching the eye. That’s why Kodak
film boxes are still the ones people look for on the shelves, while the
green Fuji film sometimes languishes. “Christmas green” for
film just never caught on... And to most people, bright green is not an
appealing color in large quantities.
Green tests poor in comprehension for type, but as a logo color, there
are exceptions… if you had a gardening service for example, green
would signify the business nicely. A dark green is wonderful for financial
services. I have control packages for Wine of the Month Club that use
green and burgundy as accent colors and tints, and have also used it successfully
for real estate for very high-end horse property, with metallic gold accent,
to frame beautiful photos of equestrians.
Warm versus cool color
Another characteristic of color is ‘warm’ versus ‘cool’.
Again, color being relative, cool palettes tend to be blues, greens, brown
and taupe… while warm palettes tend toward reds, yellows, golds,
warm greens like lime, and mauve. At one point, we tested a warm palette
versus a cool palette in a direct mail piece… and the “warmer”
palette won. But to balance the piece and to add that special contrast
I talked about earlier, we also tempered it with some cool dark blue heads,
etc. so that the balance visually was still appealing. The cool colors
made the warm colors pop, attracting the eye to where we wanted them to
look.
Legibility and comprehension
As mentioned earlier in this article, color needs to be handled carefully
when type is set on top of it.
There are colors that encourage reading of long blocks of type, and those
that discourage it. For example, NO body copy should be in any color but
BLACK. Extensive studies have proven that body copy set in colors will
reduce comprehension of that message by up to 90% if it’s a sans
serif font. That means that the reader only “gets” 10% of
what he/she would have gotten if the type were in black on a white background.
Type set in black on a medium colored background takes comprehension down
substantially too -- at least 40%. Therefore, to get maximum readership
(and response) the rule is no reversed type, and no colored type... Except
for strong dark colors for heads or subheads … and NO reversing
type out of photos, or overprinting type over photos, which can also drop
comprehension up to 90%. Again, this is common sense – when you,
yourself see type overprinting a photo, you notice your eye bouncing around,
trying to distinguish the message and the photo. This distraction is a
death knell for response.
A big disappointment this year was seeing the newly redesigned Spiegel
catalog and finding page after page of type reversed out of light and
pastel colors. Of course, it can barely be read. Statistically sales would
be a fraction of what they could expect with legible copy. It would have
been such an easy judgment call to print the type black over the pale
backgrounds. If reversing type out is part of your brand standards, you
need to rethink those standards, get them reviewed by an expert in comprehension,
and develop some guidelines that any production artist and designer can
follow to make your catalog read well.
Often, designers resist rules that will influence their layout. Yet one
of the best-known “crutches” for an artist who can’t
devise a real concept is to reverse type out. To make it look ‘arty’.
It’s the nature of the ‘creative’ being. However, many
dedicated designers will embrace this information and can be convinced
that the better outcome is worth the change in creative thinking.
A final suggestion about color and consistency
Use color so that it supports the products in your catalog, rather than
detracting from the products. Keep your catalog consistent from spread
to spread using a palette of color treatments to hold it together, but
also keep it different enough from spread to spread that people feel like
they are seeing something new, as they page through your catalog. This
is the very essence of marketing-driven catalog design.
Become educated about how color and typography increase comprehension
in your catalog and advertising, through an article called “Communicating,
or just making pretty shapes”, by Colin Whieldon of the Australian
News Bureau. His 9-year research study on the way people read, and what
makes them comprehend a written message, (and what makes them turn away
or not comprehend it) is absolutely in line with every test I’ve
ever been part of. This article can be downloaded as a PDF by going online
to:
www.worthington-levy.com/articles.html
The bottom line is, like everything in direct marketing, some solid education
and a lot of common sense goes a long way toward creating your next breakthough.
I encourage you to rethink color as it’s used in your catalogs,
direct mail and other advertising, and discover what a powerful tool color
use can be.
