Review: How Color Affects You: What Science Reveals (Craftsy)

How Color Affects You is a course for those who want to understand more about the science of colours and how it affects people.

The course has six lessons with a total length of over more than 3 hours. It's theory based course conducted by William Lidwell​'s, an experienced instructor for product design and user experience.

​The first lesson gives an introduction as to how colours are first discovered scientifically by Isaac Newton with the help of a prism. This lesson also talks about how colour associations work, for example why you would associate red​ with danger or the stop sign. It goes further to explains why context matters when thinking about colour, such as why people prefer food in yellow or red versus blue. Lastly it talks about how different people can develop their own colour language and react differently.

The latter lessons talk about the colours black and white, red, yellow, green and blue. Specifically about how these colours make people think, feel and act.

Be prepared for a lot of talking. Unlike the other Craftsy lessons I've reviewed, there are no hands-on exercises to follow. This course does not talk about pigments or art supplies.

All the associations and resulting behaviors mentioned are derived from experiments and tests. Science is used to explain the rationale. Results all have something to do with colour choices.

For example, sportsmen wearing black are perceived to be more aggressive and may draw more fouls from the referee. Wearing red can either make one feel more competitive, or for a lady make her feel more attractive.

There are lots of examples on how colour choices affect behavior and emotions. Practical applications include making your own colour choices using the knowledge you've learned from the course. It also made me think and pay more attention to how colours are used in real life, such as for signs, advertising, clothes and other subjects.

Overall, it's an insightful course on colours that I would recommend to artists, designers and anyone who might want to learn some interesting knowledge.

Enroll in the course or check out more reviews on Craftsy.

Disclosure: This course was provided to me by Craftsy for review purposes. You can support Parka Blogs by using the affiliate links as I get a little commission from each sale. :-)