Color Use in Merchandising and Advertising

Some Thoughts on Color
by JJ Goodell

It’s quite well known that the color red inspires impulsive buying. Our eyes are drawn to the color like ducks to water. Just walk into any supermarket and look at the color most often used on products. It’s red. The next one is yellow. Both colors tend to raise your blood pressure just a tad and dilate your pupils. They cause excitement, which goes to prove one thing: color affects us.

The Science of Color
For a long time, color has been used by both advertiser and merchandiser to encourage us (the consumer) to take action (purchase the product or service). In fact, the use of color in advertising and merchandising has become somewhat of a science unto itself.

Sometimes a color is selected for the sole purpose of drawing attention to the product or ad. This is when red or yellow may be used. But you can also attract attention by using a combination of colors. For instance, Stagg® Chili uses a black background with gold letters. The cereal product, Total®, creates eye-catching appeal with a blue package and a red logo.

Color can also be used to relate to a particular product or service. Consider the Green Giant® products. Their packages are set in a white background with the famous green logo. Healthy Choice® is another example of using green. Both products are trying to emulate freshness or healthfulness. Green does the job. Root beer is sold, using packages created in brown shades. A&W® is a perfect example, which uses brown and orange.

Designers & Color
Designers often select colors to bring life to an otherwise dull advertisement. Sometimes those colors selected by a designer aren’t necessary based on any real scientific choice, just as a judgment call. But when push comes to shove, the designer can usually give you a reason why he or she selected one color over another.

Red=Buy It

Just like the color red is used in signs to grab your attention, red is also used in merchandising for the same reason. Although for signs the attention is mainly danger or stop, the color red in the market is used to captivate or attention and draw us to that product. Red is the most popular color used in merchandising because of its bright captivating power. The brand Coca Cola is a good example of a company that snatched the color red and uses its power to reel in the buyers. Coca Cola also uses another popular color in its add. They use a small yellow line to accent the white curve that goes across the ads. The white lettering placed upon the all-bright red background with a thin yellow accent causes the product logo to stand out against other ads that are duller. This marketing strategy is important for all companies if they want their product to sell.

Red=Stop

Colors are used all around us in many different ways and for many different reasons. They are used to draw our attention to the product or the situation. There are many uses of different colors that merchandisers use to encourage people to react and buy the products. Colors are also used in everyday signs for different purposes. Bold bright colors like red are used in the sign world to portray stop. The Stop sign itself went through many changes until it gained its red with white letters to signify STOP universally. At first the stop sign was white with black, yellow with black, and then finally it was agreed that since red is the universal “stop” color used on all traffic signals that the stop sign itself should be red.

Conceptual Art-In Class Project-Sol LeWitt

Today in class we learned about Conceptual Art pieces. We looked at a Sol LeWitt example and carried it out in class. The project is simmilar to the one above but a little different. We made a grid of 7x4 pannals. Each person draws out of a hat a piece of paper that has a line on it. You draw the line and then hang the pannel up onto the wall. Everyone goes around the room taking cards and drawing them onto the larger pannel and hanging it onto the wall. At first this project was a little confusing and complicated as everyone tried to figure out where the pannels go. In the end we had a grid with different lines that connect with eachother to make a pattern. I found it interesting to see the end results and then to research online different examples from the actual artist himself.

Conceptual Art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions.[1] This method was fundamental to LeWitt's definition of Conceptual art, one of the first to appear in print:
“ In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. – Sol LeWitt, "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", Artforum, June 1967. ” For the layman, this quotation highlights a key difference between a conceptualist installation and a traditional work of art - that the conceptualist's work may require little or no physical craftsmanship in its execution, whereas traditional art is distinguished by requiring physical skill and the making of aesthetic choices. As Tony Godfrey has put it, after Joseph Kosuth's definition of art, conceptual art is an art which questions the very nature of what is understood as art.

Yoko Ono- YouTube Performance Art- CUT PIECE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqXSjFB08C8



This is a YouTube video you can watch of a performance art by Yoko Ono. To me it is somewhat silly and I do not know what she is trying to get across to the public, but it is still interesting to watch. Check it out!!

Mirrored Mimes and In Class Performance Activity

My Performance Art Piece: Mirrored Mimes
Two people sit face to face with arms up and palms barely touching. One person starts to make gestures and the other person has to follow at the same time. Then the other person starts to make the gestures a little faster and the other participant has to keep up. If the activity is done well and practiced the effect would be very much like gestures in a mirror.

I felt that mine went pretty well considering that I thought it would not and that it would be a little ridiculous. It was a little difficult I thought for them to keep up with each other but it went really well and was fun. I participated in another students activity outside. Me and another student, Jordan, stood a few feet away from each other. Jordan threw a ball to me and then I caught it. Then I had to decide where we should move 5 paces (e.g. 5 paces to the left) the I threw him the ball and then he would decide where to move. We were both a little confused at first but then got the hang of it and it became a fun game. One of my favorite activity was that of Casey's who had two participants draw some Jewish stars on a piece of paper. At the end of 2 minutes she asked them what they were thinking about. One answer was very interesting. She stated that she was thinking how symbols can be broken down into simpler shapes. I found this response interesting since generly a responce would be simpler. I think all the activities were interesting and it was neat to see what others came up with for their activity.