SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: Good Online Color Psycholog
Re: SIGIA-L: Good Online Color Psychology References
From: George Olsen (george.olsen_at_pobox.com)
Date: Fri Mar 30 2001 - 19:31:17 EST
To tie this into the cultural differences threads -- which people are
interpreting yellow. Don't remember specifics, but I do remember the color
has different associations in different cultures.
Sounds more like a design/usability question. I'd second the suggestion to
show the client that yellow on gray (at least with the specific colors
being used) doesn't read.
<OFF TOPIC>
To digress a bit, although it's probably not the case here, there's an
interesting issue when usability needs to be balanced against branding.
Supposed the client's coporate identity was built around yellow and gray.
Asking them to discard that entirely for the Web, probably not an
appropriate solution. A better approach would be to see if you could "bend"
the color in ways that will work (there are combinations of dark grays and
not-overly-bright yellows that are quite readable), or use the color scheme
in areas where it won't cause problems. For example, if you were doing a
site for Kodak, you will *not* be changing "Kodak yellow" -- since it's got
huge brand recognition. But you don't have to use it as the background
color behind text.
</OFF TOPIC>
As far as "web safe" colors, the only reason to use them was to prevent
dithering on monitors set to 256 colors. Since less than 10% of users still
have their monitors set this way
<http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2001/January/colors.html>, it's not much
of an issue nowadats. And it's only really an issue for graphics.
HTML-created colors (such as HTML text), will "snap" to the web-safe color
when the monitor is set to 256. Might not be as appealing as the ones you
chose, but it's be reasonably similiar. Even in graphics, it's only really
an issue if you've got large areas of flat colors that might look "furry"
if they dither.
>I have a client who wants a #ffff00 (pure yellow) and gray palette. Aside
>from a personal preference of thinking it looks awful, it's limited and
>hard to work with due to the small number of web safe grays.
>
>Can anyone point me to a url that talks about how people interpret yellow?
>I recall something saying that most people are not overly fond of it on web
>pages. (Gee, no wonder -- yellow text doesn't show up against white and it
>doesn't show up well against dark colors either.)
>
>If you reply offlist, I will summarize.
>Kayla
>
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_____________________________________________________________________
George Olsen george_at_interactionbydesign.com
User Experience Architect 310-403-0301
http://www.interactionbydesign.com
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