How Colors Affect You: What Science Reveals

Publisher's Summary

There’s more to colors than just aesthetics. There’s an actual science behind how colors work on your eyes and your brain. And the secrets that scientists are uncovering offer astounding revelations about how colors influence the way you think, feel, and behave. And what’s truly surprising: The way our eyes perceive and our brains interpret reds, greens, blues, blacks, and other colors isn’t a subjective experience, but a hard-wired one. It’s a profound concept - one whose ramifications extend to everything from business and advertising to politics and entertainment.

These lectures will open your eyes to why your favorite products practically jump off the shelf; why certain logos are more memorable than others; why particular scenes in nature evoke peace, joy, or fear; and so much more. Now you can learn how to tap into the power of color to create environments and achieve a range of visual goals in the six lectures of How Colors Affect You: What Science Reveals, taught by design expert and professor William Lidwell of the University of Houston.

Central to this course is the expanse of information about how colors work on our brains to steer our thoughts and actions. You’ll go behind the scenes and examine the fascinating experiments and case studies that scientists have used to uncover what they know about color. And you’ll finally understand the (often hidden) significance behind the colors of your everyday life.

A must-have course for corporate leaders, design professionals, marketers, and anyone else who communicates visually, How Colors Affect You tells you everything you need to know about the science of color and its impact on all aspects of human experience. These lectures will give you a beautiful new perspective on color - one rooted in credible scientific knowledge and not popular myth.

©2013 The Great Courses (P)2013 The Teaching Company, LLC

More to color than meets the eye.

This course has much more to offer than its title might suggest. It is full of surprising information and highly interesting. Even though it is short, it is packed. Based on science, not pseudo-science or mysticism. It is focused more on psychology than physiology. Well presented and full of surprising facts.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Conspicuously Missing:

Neuroscience. Is fMRI data for color studies unavailable? Theories are all over other the place on the "evolution" of blue perception, with experiments pointing to cultural perception, and evolutionary theories to fish ancestry. It would be nice to see brains reacting to colors and would probably provide much more biological insight into why we make value judgments based on colors.
With all the theoretical complexity discussed, I find they miss out on a few very basic explanations for our psychological responses to color, especially black vs. white. The ability to see has profound evolutionary consequences for humans. Not only is it harder or impossible to see thinks like food, water, game, predators, or precipices, in the dark, its even hard to distinguish or identify darkly colored objects in the light. Not to mention that the absence of light altogether would spell the end of life as we know it: no light = no plants = the death of our entire food chain.
Visibility would also factor into the Savannah Theory in our need for visibility to see game, predators, etc. It would naturally trump desert pics (also with high visibility) because of its presence of green plant life, indicating the presence of water and food (vegetation, game).
Lastly, visibility is again determinant with black and white design - black and white, used together, providing the most clear rendering of any design - with clarity at its best on a white back drop.
P.S. dumb question, but why does red, placed NEXT to greenish-blue, make it look more green?

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Not a "great course" yet<br />

The outcomes of the experiments we're interesting. However there was little questioning of statistical make up to validate significance. The wholesale embracing of evolutionary assumptions as pure fact leaves the listener suspicious of the good that may have come from the researchers efforts. This work has potential but falls short of qualifying as a"great" course. More critical thinking is needed to achieve more than parroting.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Awesome 👍

I am a hair color specialist I appreciated these lectures on many levels. The principals in these lectures are very relevant for anyone who id designing anything that will have color applied to it. :)