Colour

The monochromatic representations we so readily accept in the visual media are tonal stand-ins for colour, for what is, in truth, a chromatic world, our richly coloured universe. While tone is related to questions of survival and is therefore essential to the human organism, colour has stronger affinity to the emotions. It is possible to think of colour as the aesthetic frosting on the cake, rich, and in many ways useful, but not absolutely necessary for creating visual messages.

“Colour is loaded with information and one of the most pervasive visual experiences we all have in common. It is, therefore, an invaluable source for visual communicators. In the environment we share the associate meaning of the colour of trees, grass, sky, earth and on endlessly to where we see colour as a common stimulus. And there, we associate meaning.”

We know colour also under a broad category of symbolic meaning. Red means something, for instance, even where it does not have any environmental connection. The red that is associated with anger has been carried over in the "red flag (or cape) wave in front of a bull." The colour red has little significance for the bull, who has no sensitivity to the colour, but only to the fact that the cape or flag moves. Red means anger, and love, and warmth, and life, and maybe a hundred other things. Each colour has as many meanings, associative and symbolic. Thus, colour offers an enormous vocabulary of great usefulness in visual literacy.

Since perception of colour is the single most strongly emotional part of the visual process, it has great force and can be utilised to express and reinforce visual information to great advantage. Colour not only has universally shared meaning through experience, but it also has separate worth informationally through symbolically attached meaning. In addition to the highly negotiable colour meaning, each of us has our own personal subjective colour preferences. We choose our own colour statements and settings. But there is little analytic though or concern about what methods or motivation we use to arrive at our own choices in terms of the meaning and effect of colour. Whether we think about it or not, realise it or not, we tell the world a great deal when we make a colour choice.