USING COLOUR TO INFLUENCE DECISION MAKING

This e-book tries to give us an insight knowledge about colour theory and explains how it effects our everyday life. It does not seem like a complete book, the first two chapters specially are more like randomly jotted down facts. Later on in the book the author picks up on these facts again and tries to provide deeper understanding of the subject matter.

Same parts of the book appear to be just a list of bullet points without any further detailed explanations. At one point the author, talks about the colours of the month, but any background information about why yellow is the colour of April fails to appear. However some other parts of the book are more detailed e.g. "Which colours sell best".

Even though some interesting aspects become more clear through this e-book, like the association of colour and music, the author fails to keep the reader interested. The relevant subjects are mentioned, but visual examples to emphasise the psychological effects would be very helpful. Especially with this being printed on the internet, there is a much bigger ability to use media like audio, video and pictures to display the influence colour can have on us.

Most of the information found in this book was not new to me, particular because of my previous interest in colour psychology. I am not sure in which why this influenced me when reading the book., because I found it hard to continue reading. I could have been me not showing the sufficient interest in the subject, but the fact that a lot of information was repeated throughout the chapters didn’t help keeping my interest either.

There is a possibility of becoming thoroughly confused by the myriad of psychological test results. As the author points out, blue is a colour associated for sweets, e.g. as a wrapping for chocolate, yet it is also one not suitable for relation to eating. This demonstrates that it is important to distinguish between different contexts when applying psychological decision-making. And that there is also a lot of controversy in regards to colour decisions. A lot of our associations with various colours are affected by personal experience, especially in our childhood and culture we grew up in.. It is difficult to see how psychology of colour can provide facts, as rules cannot be established. However, tendencies towards certain colour associations can be established.

As seen by the extensive bibliography, the author researched the subject thoroughly. And the information was relevant and covered a lot of different aspects regarding colour. However the presentation and the structure of information could have been more organised and precise. Without jumping back and forth between topics.

In the last part of the book author lists popular colours and their psychological attributes. This section might be the most useful as a quick reference regarding a specific colour.

In general I would only recommend this book as a quick reference than an enjoyable reading material.