Wednesday, March 18, 2015
The Color in Signs
We learned in various chapters of the book that semiotics is the study of the significance of signs. Now in this chapter we learned about the color in signs. We all have grown up with signs as part of our everyday lives so for us they are the norm. When we are driving in the car, we see a stop sign and we know that we have to stop before we can proceed. What the book brings into this is more than just a the stop sign means stop. What color is the stop sign? It’s red. We know while driving down the same road and approach a busy intersection we have to look for instructions on what we should do when we approach the intersection. There are no signs at the intersection, but there is a traffic light. Even though, there is no stop sign at the intersection. We know we have to stop before entering the intersection, because the color of the traffic light is red. To all of us red means stop. Does it mean every time we see something red that that mean it has to signal stop? NO, not all the time. The color red may have other meanings such as when we see a picture of a person with a red face. Maybe the red is to show he is mad or is hot.
We learned about the historic color scheme with the high levels of saturation to the development of oil-based paints to make paints not bleed into one other. Theses paints were developed in an effort make it easier to mix the primary colors to make more or secondary colors. In modern times, our present color schemes contain millions of colors or shades of colors in our color wheel. We have color matching today as well. We can take any colored item to the local paint store and have them match it so we can pain our homes.
Kress and Van Leeuwen wanted us to take away from the chapter is that there is a history of color and even beyond their history is a semiotic resource that can be continued to be used and combined.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi Scott,
ReplyDeleteThe concept of colors and their meanings fascinate me. I had wrote my own post on color and Cathy had shared a link with me and it lists the colors and what they represent. You had mentioned the color red and to us we correlate it with the word stop. Here are some of the words mentioned on the website: Action, Adventure, Aggressive, Blood, Danger, Drive, Energy, Excitement, Love, Passion, Strength and Vigor. According to the website "Red is an intense color. It can summon conflicting emotions from blood and warfare to love and passion. It is often used in logo design to grip the viewer’s attention and has been known to raise one’s blood pressure or make people hungry." I was surprised by the information the site provided on the color red and the fact that it was never mentioned that red means stop. I also correlate red with fire trucks, ambulances, and police because of the red lights or the red vehicles. When we see any of these vehicles or people - we usually stop or get out of their way. It's amazing what colors can symbolize. I found it interesting that brown represents calmness. I am not sure I have ever thought of brown that way. Check out the link Cathy provided - I posted it on here too.
http://www.logocritiques.com/resources/color_psychology_in_logo_design
When I was in Aruba a few years ago, I visited a butterfly sanctuary. They did a presentation on things in nature and why they are certain colors. They say that many bugs that are red, are actually poisonous to certain other animals, people, etc and that their red color is actually considered a warning. I think this topic is so interesting and something that I would like to study further at some point. I would think this is important knowledge for someone in a marketing or advertising type role.
DeleteHi Scott, While the stop sign and red traffic light are international signs to stop at an intersection, it still gives me culture shock every time I see someone driving through the red traffic light or by a stop sign without stopping! This has happened to me frequently in three different countries, one of which is Italy, where it was 'normal' in certain places to drive like this in the evening/night-time. So, while these signs --colour/shape/location --are meaningful, the interpretation is given a cultural/local spin, like the ability to decide when to stop and when not to. While in some places it may be an issue of security ( I wonder if this applies to locations in the US?) in the Italian (Rome) context it just seemed to be that in the evenings/night-time there was no need to stop, getting to the location was of higher priority! Just thought that I would throw in this 'trivia'. I guess the main point is that sometimes culture 'trumps' the traditional meaning.
ReplyDelete