Character associations
DESCRIBING COLOURS:
Colour characters
What types of words do you associate with each colour character?
Details:
All ages
Time: 15 minutes
Learning Outcome: Associate ideas, concepts, emotions with colour characters
Colour Concept: Discover that we often associate colour characters with our life experiences that are accentuated (or enhanced) by other more descriptive attributes of colour than just hue. This can happen naturally without us even thinking about it.
Materials:
Template for character association exercise
Instructions:
On the handout, in each character’s zone, write down any associated words you can think of for that colour character. The words can be ideas, concepts, emotions, foods, seasons - anything you can thing of. Write down as many associative words as you can.
Example: Pale: pastels, soft, Easter
Share your list with your classmates.
Vocabulary:
Questions and observations:
What sorts of similarities do you find for words associated with each character, compared to your classmates? What sorts off differences do you find?
Which character is associated with the most positive words (e.g. happy, peaceful, etc.)?
Which character is associated with the most negative words(e.g. sad, angry, etc.)?
What’s going on here?
Find out more:
Designer Ellen Divers has researched how best to use colours with all their variations and characters in design. See her published article on “Theory to practice: Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (PAD) theory for architectural color design”
Ellen has created a Color Compass which shows character associations
She also has a podcast on The Hidden Dimensions of Color
