The Power of Color

Color plays a significant role for the human brain. Color generates emotions, creates ideas, expresses messages, and sparks interest. Red says stop and green says to go, and together red and green are seen as Christmas. Bright colors set a happy and positive mood, whereas dark colors project the opposite. Light colors appear closer, whereas dark colors appear to recede. Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow show excitement, optimism, and creativity, whereas cool colors like green, blue and gray symbolize security, calmness, and harmony.

“All colors arouse specific associative ideas…”

Yves Klein, French artist

Colors chosen for a website use the psychology of color to provide strength and relevance to the design. It’s never about choosing colors simply because they look nice and you like them — it’s about choosing colors that will generate the desired response from your marketing materials and help create a connection with customers. 

Here are some surprising pairs that work:

brown and orange

Real Estate
Brown and Orange
Why? Associated with home, hearth, and stability.
Says: At home I’m safe and comfortable.

Financial Services
Green and Blue
Why? Commands authority and inspires trust.
Says: My money is safe here.

Home Services
Black and Burnt Sienna
Why? Down to earth values, authoritative.
Says: I trust these people

Health Products
Brown and Lime Green
Why? Reflective of nature and healing
Says: I feel a calm confidence

Entertainment
Orange and Turquoise
Why? Playful and energetic
Says: I feel good about this service

Want to learn more about the psychology of color? 

Need a logo makeover, but don’t know where to start? Just send us a link to your current logo, whether or not it was designed in 1920 or 2020. We’ll assess whether it’s aesthetically tired or timeliness, how it tests on the myriad of technological devices that showcase your logo online, and analyze the color psychology from an outsider’s point of view. It may need only slight shifts, a simple refresh, or a whole new makeover. Don’t you think your business is worth finding out?! Analyze My Logo

Home Work

How to work from home and still stay productive during the pandemic.

Okay everyone, your assignment this month, maybe next month, and who knows for how long, is to work from home to avoid spreading the Coronavirus. Sound familiar? 

Thanks to technology, we can now work from home as long as we have a good Internet connection. But it takes far more than large data transfer, cloud access, and backup servers. It takes commitment, willpower, focus, and planning.

Since our humble beginnings as website designers in 1995, we’ve worked from home. Excuse me for sounding a bit too much like Farmer’s Insurance, but “we’ve seen a thing or two” so we know what we’re talking about. Working from home is convenient and saves a ton of gasoline and lunch money, but it has its challenges. With most of our friends and clients also working from home this month, we thought we’d share our wisdom with other suffering souls of social distancing.

If you are working from home:

  1. Stay close to a routine
    Remember how you’d wake up, put on the coffee, shower, dress, then grab a mug for the drive to the office? By the time you got to your desk you were ready to work. At home, use a similar routine but in lieu of the commute, take 15-minutes to check the news online and respond to business emails. Handle personal texts and emails during a mid-morning 15-minute break or at lunchtime.
  2. Look good to yourself
    Leave the nightwear in the bedroom. Puffy pants are OK, but only the nice puffy pants, with a coordinated shirt. Better yet, wear comfy pants that you wouldn’t mind wearing in mixed company outside of the house. We feel like we look; look sharp, feel sharp. Shower, shave and brush your teeth and hair.
  3. Work like your boss is watching
    Without the daily structure of scheduled meetings and routine tasks, it’s important to keep a list of tasks (when you check them off as complete, it feels good) and learn how to shift gears between work and personal. Create white noise with your favorite music, but except at noon or in the case of a national emergency, leave the television off.
  4. Create a work space
    Avoid any work space that closely resembles a couch, La-Z-Boy® chair, pool float, or kitchen stool — places you associate with leisure time. There’s something about “down time” seating that makes eyelids start to close. If you don’t have a home office or desk of some sort, designate a specific room or surface in your home from which to work.
  5. Set boundaries
    Unless your job is working for yourself, your company, or others’ social media platforms, it’s best to stay away except during short scheduled breaks in the day. Creating boundaries for the easy things makes it easier to focus on the more difficult tasks that may lay ahead. 

At the end of the day, log off from your laptop and say “I’m done!” Saying it out aloud signals to your brain that it’s the end of the day, time to stop thinking about work. Once you commit to the workday’s end, the stress will drain away. It’s common that a relaxed mind will discover solutions to nagging problems, and fresh creative ideas form out of nowhere. Jot it down. Go play.