Word-Colour Associations in Design

Colour conveys multiple types of information and is widely used in Art and Design. The critical role of colour in design is undoubted, and colour selection is an important step or process that can affect whether a design is successful or not. Colour association plays an essential role in colour selection in design. It can help designers to create satisfying and useful colour schemes which meet the requirements of consumers, brands and aesthetics. It has long been established that strong associations exist between colours and concepts. The term ‘association’ refers to a connection or cooperative link between someone or something. Colour association expresses a specific relationship between colour and various concepts or objects. However, it is noticed that when the colour association is discussed, it is often in one direction, that is, from colours to concepts. However, in this thesis, it is argued that colour association is bidirectional, meaning that we can also start with a word or concept and ask the question which colour (or colours) are associated with it. An important contribution of this work is to emphasis the direction word-->colour in terms of colour association.

The research focused on word-->colour associations in design. This topic is interesting in itself but may have practical application in the design field. This thesis contains both qualitative and quantitative research. The main contribution of this research is: 1) to highlight and evidence strong associations from word to colour; 2) to identify the (three) main characteristics of these associations through the introduction of a practical method to analyse their characteristics; 3) to explore the influence of culture on word-->colour associations and to develop a two-aspect cultural influence model (and an evaluation system to quantify the effect of culture on word-->colour associations). This research may provide a meaning discussion for colour selection in design and help people exploring the theoretical and practical methods of colour selection. It is also hoped that this research could attract more attention to the colour association discussion, especially the discussion of the colour association from concept-->colour.