How Colors Affect You: What Science Reveals - William Lidwell

Tulips an alternate view - N. Carlson

What color should police officers wear to control a crowd? What color should the same officers wear to donuts with the cops?  What is the best color for a pediatric nurse?  Can your eyes prime you to taste a color?  What color is the best for reducing mental fatigue and increasing creativity? What color best signifies danger?  What colors reduce success in dating? This six part lecture series How Colors Affect You: What Science Reveals in the Great Courses answers these questions and more  backing this up with reports from scientific studies.

The studies on the effect of colors on taste perception was fascinating.  People who ate colored gelatin with no flavor reported tasting flavors that matched the colors with the exception of blue which had little flavor. It would make a great science fair project.

Job hunters, marketers, politicians, creative people and restaurant owners need to know the proper colors to to shape the response they want from the public.  Improper colors like blue ketchup can be a marketing disaster but green colored ketchup has worked. Circadian photo receptors respond to blue by increasing alertness during the day but they are harmful at night. I enjoyed learning about the effect of colors based on experimental data and not conventional wisdom.

Answers to earlier questions: Black, blue, blue, yes, green, red, yellow and green

How Colors Affect You promo - approx. 1 min. 

How Great Designers Think -William Lidwell - 68 minutes.