Thursday, March 22, 2007

Color Commentary

Driving down the road you will notice that signs have specific colors. A long time ago someone decided that yellow means caution or slow down. Blue means information or rest stop or maybe even that the road is cleaned by the Reformed Pedophile club of North America. White signs post rules and fines $800 for littering, loud stereos will be punished or in the road solid white stripes mean don't pass stay in your lane. Red means stop, warning and danger. If you look at combinations like red and white you get more rules, do not enter, yield, no parking etc...

I started to think about this yesterday when I set out to get light bulbs. I pulled up to Menards and saw they have several red flags above their store....screaming at me to stop, danger, unsafe water for swimming so I kept the car in drive and went down the road to home depot where their orange logo seems to say Men at Work...much better given my mission.

I pulled out of the parking lot and noticed the big American flag and tried to divulge its secrets using my new color cohesion theory. Now the blue box with the stars could mean that we are a big rest stop with fifty different places that have different rules and taxes. While the solid red and white bars could mean that we have layers or rules stacked on top of each other and we will pull anyone over who tries to pass us...

There seems to be glaring examples of this misbranding of colors everywhere...either that or I just stumbled on to a secret code and a whole new conspiracy theory...

The blue and red SuperAmerica logoo = Danger Restroom

Marlbro could have walked away from its lawsuits if it only would have asserted that its packaging already warned consumers with its red and white box.

Savers with its yellow flag with big bold red letters that says sale...enough said

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you back on the pipe?

You are either the most retarded individual I have ever known or the most brilliant.
I am still waiting to find out which.

Billy

Sarah said...

i just love you sometimes!

Rocketstar said...

Nice, I love it. I think you need to start the US Department of Coloration

Mags said...

Someone I used to know thought about this exact subject extensively and was obsessed with figuring out why people chose the colors they did in advertising.

You are not alone. ;)

Thomas said...

Perfect post title, too. Quite clever.

Sarah said...

i almost didn't buy shampoo today because of the color of the bottle.

see, i like to try new products, and while the shampoo was a different brand, it was the same color as the previous stuff i bought.