Don’t Forget About Colors!

The Miami International Airport is expansive and can be intimidating to visitors, but there are some shared characteristics it has with other major international airports that prove to be thoughtful in design and layout. One short coming that was once pointed out by marketing guru Seth Godin is that in Miami, like most airports, the signs are mono-chromatic. As a result, the weary traveler arriving from out of the country wanders in circles, looking for their destination. With a little color, Imagine how much easier it would be to find out where you were going. If every sign with the word TAXI on it was in yellow instead of white, the traveler could simply know the color of where they were going and would naturally scan for it.

The online world still has not fully embraced using color as a signal, but it doesn’t preclude us from using color to send and reinforce our own signals and messages.  Having an understanding of the underlying psychological factors related to how people typically interpret colors can ultimately improve an artists ability to evoke a mood or send a message with visuals. You don’t necessarily need to make a big deal of of it, and sometime less is more. For example, make the button you want pressed green on every page, then look at your analytics to determine if users naturally gravitate more to the green buttons.