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Color and The Human Emotional Response

PMP Marketing Group's website design is founded on intensive research and discovery prior to designing even the simplest of marketing pieces. In doing so, we ensure that the law firm is placed in the best position to resonate with a potential client through mix of various, calculated design elements. Colors play a critical role in the design of websites as PMP’s web designers brand a law firm.

Law firms often come into contact with potential clients when emotions are high. These people have suffered in some manner and are seeking legal assistance for a sensitive issue. As a result, constructing and designing websites must account for how humans respond to design elements emotionally, color being the primary response trigger.

Using Colors to Elicit Emotion

Practice Made Perfect has honed in on the value of emotional marketing. From this perspective, we take time to understand a law firm’s brand before creating marketing pieces. As we begin to develop an understanding of a law firm’s culture, mission, and overall feel, our expert web designers combine specific colors and textures to achieve specific actions from potential clients.

Color theory research has provided a number of philosophies regarding the reasons people select certain colors as their favorites, while other colors do not appeal to them at all. There are schools of thought that explain these preferences as associations we have made early on in life with particular colors and others that argue there are inherent traits that a color possesses which relate a specific feeling to the viewer.

The Emotional Associations We Make with Color

Interestingly, though, the emotional association with color is not only influenced by their personal preferences but by their culture. In western culture, the assumptions that are made about the colors red and blue, for instance, could very simply be boiled down to hot and cold, respectively. Hot water on a cooler is labeled with a red knob, and cold with a blue knob.

From this example we can understand that colors carry certain expectations for the viewer, along with the emotions that they generally elicit. The following breakdown briefly summarizes the “meanings” of basic colors along with the emotional associations most individuals have with them:

  • Red: Associated with passion, fire and warmth. Stimulates the brain and offers the greatest visibility of all colors on the spectrum. In advertising, commonly used to promote high-energy products, such as games, cars, sports organizations, etc.
  • Blue: Associated with stability, depth and calm. Typically a masculine color; offers a counterpoint to red. In advertising, conveys a sense of cleanliness, consciousness and intellect. Used to promote vacations, airlines, spas, bottled water, etc.
  • Yellow: Another energetic color, yellow is associated with joy and happiness, like the sun. Stimulates hunger, conveys cheerfulness. In advertising, light yellow invokes freshness, children’s daycares, toys, etc.
  • Green: The color of nature. Harmony, growth, freshness and youth. Dark green implies money and government. In advertising green can be used for banking, to advertise natural products or to imply safety.
  • Purple: The color of royalty, purple implies power and ambition. Because it is such a rarely occurring color in nature, purple can seem artificial, though it is always a favorite color of young children. In advertising, women’s design and children’s products do well with this hue.
  • White: Purity and innocence. In design, viewers usually perceive white positively as it conveys fresh starts, new beginnings and cleanliness. In advertising, white is used for promoting medical products and services.
  • Black: Classic, elegant and formality are the images that black evokes. The color of mourning, black is often used with bright colors, which helps them to stand out. In advertising, black can create a dynamic, sleek look when mixed with pops of other colors, although it conveys a dark, heavy mood.

Early research on color theory by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe suggests that the brain is more active when viewing certain colors, like red and yellow, which could account for those colors’ ability to “stimulate” the viewer.

PMP’s Design Perspective

At PMP, our goal is to make each and every website visitor “feel” something. From an emotional angle, we are able to touch potential clients in manner which makes them feel comfortable, an essential component for injured victims. From a persuasive angle, our design elements guide web visitors to navigate the site in an intended manner.

Practice Made Perfect takes our expertise in color and the human emotional response and transports these design features to represent the law firm in a favorable, positive light.

To learn more, please contact us at 561-253-6707 or simply fill out the "Contact Us" form located to the right.

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Phone: 1 (561) 296-5678