COLOR THEORY IN GRAPHICS DESIGN
Color theory is the collection of rules and guidelines which designers use
to communicate with users through appealing color schemes in visual
interfaces. To pick the best colors every time, designers use a color wheel
and refer to extensive collected knowledge about human optical ability,
psychology, culture and more.
Use Color Theory to Match What Your Users Want to See
The right contrast is vital to catching users’ attention in the first place. The vibrancy you choose for your design is likewise crucial to provoking desired emotional responses from users. How they react to color choices depends on factors such as gender, experience, age and culture. In all cases, you should design for accessibility – e.g., regarding red-green color blindness. Through UX research, you can fine-tune color choices to resonate best with specific users. Your users will encounter your design with their own expectations of what a design in a certain industry should look like. That’s why you must also design to meet your market’s expectations geographically. For example, blue—an industry standard for banking in the West—also has positive associations in other cultures. However, some colors can evoke contradictory feelings from certain nationalities (e.g., red: good fortune in China, mourning in South Africa, danger/sexiness in the USA). Overall, you should use usability testing to confirm your color choices.