Get to Know a Color! Orange is Controversial

The color orange elicits strong reactions. For instance, it makes the Syracuse University mascot smile (though he does not have much to smile about at the moment) and it surprises prop comedian Carrot Top.

The website Sensational Color proclaims that orange “sparks more controversy than any other hue,” and that it “elicits a stronger ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ response than other colors.” I learned this firsthand early on in my design career, when I used bright orange in one project and was thereafter known to some of my orange-hating coworkers as “Mr. Orange,” “that guy who uses orange all the time,” or “fat idiot.”

A combination of primary colors red and yellow, orange is a secondary color. It’s warm, so most color theory sources agree that orange is an upbeat, high-energy color and a stimulant of everything from appetite to brain activity. The website Color Wheel Pro says that “orange increases oxygen supply to the brain” and is “highly accepted by young people.” (I’m not sure what they mean by “young people,” but my orange-haired four-year-old daughter likes orange, and she does not shy away from controversy.)

According to Wikipedia, the name of the color comes from the name of the fruit, and “the first recorded use of orange as a color name in English was in 1512, in the court of King Henry VIII.” (Also according to Wikipedia, George Clooney is president of the United States and William Shakespeare was born in 1927 and was raised by a family of squirrels, so take that with a grain of salt.)

In various cultures, according to Sensational Color, orange is accociated with happiness and love (China and Japan), family (Native American), gluttony (Christianity), and Tang (USA). (Okay, that last part wasn’t in that article, but you know it’s true.) Bright, citrus-like orange is associated with spring and summer, while darker orange is associated with fall.

Speaking of controversy, even though the Dutch flag is red, white, and blue, orange is considered the color of Dutch national pride (not to mention their soccer team, the Oranje). Why? Because orange is the color of the Dutch royal family, which “hails from the House of Orange,” according to the article “Why the Dutch Wear Orange” on the website Dutch Amsterdam. In fact, the Dutch celebrate Queen’s Day every April 30 by singing, “Oranje boven, oranje boven, leve the Koningin!” (Orange on top, orange on top, long live the Queen!), presumably while waving red, white, and blue flags.

Another interesting fact about orange is that every single time I have ever heard the soon-to-be-defunct color-coded terror threat level announced in an airport, it has been orange.

In design, orange can be used to attract attention without being as alarming as red or as oppressively cheery as yellow, but if you use it, be prepared to deal with the orange haters.

Orange is often used with its complement, blue, to create a bold, vibrant color palette, which is why you often see this combination in the uniforms of sports teams, such as the Denver Broncos football team, the stupid New York Mets baseball team (who, if they never win another game ever, it would be fine with me), and countless college and university athletic programs. This striking, blue-orange palette is frequently used in aquariums to draw out the color of the particular species of jellyfish pictured here. The photo above is from the Vancouver Aquarium in Canada, but it’s no accident that you see this blue used in this sort of display in many aquariums.

As with other warm colors, it’s easy to overuse orange. Because of its brightness, pure orange is best used as a highlight color, especially online. The website examples above mitigate the offensive effects of orange by using a light, peachy tint (Pampaneo) or using it at full saturation, but sparingly (Glue). (These examples are borrowed from the article “24 Examples of Orange Websites” on the website Inspiredology.)

Also easy to overuse is this joke: Knock knock. Who’s there? Banana. Banana who? Knock knock. Who’s there? Banana. Banana who? Knock knock. Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Orange ya glad I didn’t say banana?

Finally, orange is high in Vitamin C, which prevents scurvy, and that’s something we can all agree on.

Also in this series (so far): Red, Blue, Yellow, Purple.
Photos courtesy The Sports Bank and ABC.

Get to Know a Color! Red

My six-year-old son Joel recently started wearing the Philadelphia Phillies clothing I’ve been buying him since he was born. I know that Joel resents the Phillies because they’re frequently on TV when he’d rather be watching Spongebob Squarepants, so I asked him about it. I figured he had decided to embrace the Phillies out of affection for his father or a desire to relate to his extended family, much of which is in Philadelphia. The actual reason is much simpler than that: after stints with green, yellow, and blue, red is now Joel’s favorite color.

This got me to thinking about how and why people relate to certain colors. This also made me hungry, because it turns out that red is an appetite stimulant, which may explain why there are so many fat Phillies fans.

Anyway, welcome to the first installment of “Get to Know a Color!” Every now and again in the coming months, we’ll delve into the meanings, associations, and usage of a specific color. (To paraphrase Buster Bluth, as I have done before, this party is going to be off the hook.)

The human eye can perceive roughly 10 million colors, so if I do one a week, I’ll be done in the year 194,317, or shortly before the Earth is swallowed up by the sun. To narrow it down a bit, Isaac Newton, who devised the first color wheel in 1666, identified seven pure spectral colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Since indigo and violet are both essentially purple, we can narrow that to six. Given that primary season just ended in politics, we’ll start with red. (Get it? Because it’s a primary color! Now we’re having fun.)

First, a note about creating meaning with color: The color wheel is your friend. We encourage designers to select a color palette using the color wheel. Colors that oppose each other on the color wheel—blue and orange, yellow and purple, or green and red—are complements. Used together, they create a bold statement. Colors adjacent to one another on the color wheel, like green and blue or orange and red, are analogous. They create a softer, subtle visual presence. Selecting colors carefully based on a specific kind of color palette will reinforce your message.

Look up color psychology online and you’ll find a lot of sweeping statements about specific colors. An article about color psychology on the website infoplease says this about the color red:


One important thing to keep in mind when you read this sort of thing is that these meanings vary across cultures. For instance, in China, red is associated with good luck, but in South Africa, it’s associated with mourning. If you’re on Wall Street, the last thing you want to be is in the red. In Jamaica, if you’re red, it means that you’re drunk. In Germany, if you had 99 balloons, they would definitely be red.

Another factor to keep in mind is that sometimes these generalizations can be contradictory. Red is associated with love and warm emotions, but it is also associated with danger and alarm. In the United States, red is the color of the Republican party; globally, it’s associated with communism.

Whatever the associations, red is the most intense color on the color wheel. According to Johannes Itten’s The Art of Color, the human eye sees colors as electromagnetic radiation measured in nanometers. Of all the colors, red has the longest wavelengths, followed by orange and yellow. (For more on this, have a look at “The Physics of Color” on the website Colors on the Web.) This is why, if we were at a really awesome party and you got us talking about color, you’d hear us say that warm colors advance and cool colors recede.

Because red is so intense, it is used to attract attention. In print, it’s frequently used as a highlight color. Online, it should be used sparingly because it’s tough on the eyes in large quantities on screen (not sure how Netflix gets away with what they do). In short, red is to color what bolding is to type, or what habanero chilis are to dinner (evidently, I’m still hungry). It’s a powerful tool that should be used carefully.