Sunday, April 17, 2011

Emotional Intelligence of Color

Many times ago, I found research of one graphic designer from Ireland Orlagh O'Brien about somatic experience of emotion and feeling and I want to share it with you, also adding some of my thoughts about color and their emotional intelligence and role in our life. I believe, it will be a long trip and it will not finish with tis post.
More information you can find on a web-page Emotionally Vague.
How do people feel anger, sadness, love, fear or joy?
There were 250 participant in the survey, which Orglagh made. And there are interesting results.
First of all, there were identified the color scheme of emotions. There are main and additional colors, which  people associated with every emotion.
Orlagh also identified which kind of "essences" cause several emotions. For example Joy is associated mostly with friends, music, sunshine, family, sea, etc. Anger with injustice, rudness, betrayal, etc. Sadness with death, suffering, thinking of war, etc. Love with friends, people, love, boyfriend, etc.
Moreover, it was defined where does each emotion concentrate in our body
Love is spreading all around the body, with concentration around heart.
Fear is concentrated a lot in head and stomach and it is getting you feeling of being "squared".
Sadness is concentrated around heart, and gives a feeling that something is pushing you from upstairs.
Anger is concentrated in head and hands, and it feels like head is blowing up.
More about this research you can find in this video, where Orlagh is making a presentation.


In yoga every chakra also is associated with certain thing, emotion and color. As far as I remember, fear is concentrated in stomach, in second chakra, the same we can see in this research. About chakras I will write later, when I make interview with some of my favorite yoginas. 
Another thing, I wanted to tell you about is one particular tool from Adobe company, which is called Adobe Kuler. You can use it, if you want to choose color for some of your graphic design. First, you need to think, which kind of emotions you want your stakeholder to have, and then write down a word in this on-line app and you will receive suitable kit of 5 colors, which are reflecting your emotion. I think it is very smart thing, and worth using.  Just try and you will like it! 
Preparing this post I got this kind of color scheme for Emotional Intelligence
How can I use it?
There are a lot of things, but first of all this kind of research helps me to understand what should I do, which kind of products to make in order to create certain emotions in the head of my stakeholders (friends, customers, etc). If I want to get some joyful emotional state from my stakeholders  probably I shouldn't use red+black in my creatures, but better yellow and blue. I understood which kind of images may influence people to have certain behavior (like if you see group of friends in the picture, you possibly can move to "love+joyfull" mood, and this kind of mood can be cool, if I am making a web-design oriented on youth. 
Anyway, if you have any thought about emotional intelligence of the color, and comments or relevant links, I would be happy to have any feedback!
Have a good and colorful mood!


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