Colors of life..

Upon R.K’s request..

The following tale appeared from someone who had worked at the Whole Foods store in Palo Alto a few blocks from Jobs’ home: “I was moving carts one afternoon when I saw this silver Mercedes parked in a handicapped spot. Steve Jobs was inside screaming at his car phone. This was right before the first iMac was unveiled and I’m pretty sure I could make out, “Not. F***ing. Blue. Enough!!!”

That was the obsessive perfectionist Steve Jobs shrieking about the importance and value addition a simple primary color could make. Starting from our shoes to the private jet (just go with the flow..) we’d all like to buy, we too are obsessed with colors. It adds a whole new perception to life. After all, there would have been no fun if the world we see was completely in grayscale (ask any animal, they’d vouch for this or even better, watch a black and white movie).

Unlike most other things in life, colors are something that are inexplicable in nature. How do you even know, when you think blue — when you say blue — that you are talking about the same blue as anyone else? There is no way on earth you can describe how a color looks like to a blind person, much like the way you can’t explain anyone the multitude of emotions experienced each day, be it happy or sad or excited or nervous. I believe the human tendency to associate emotions with colors derive their roots from the mysterious inexplicability of either of them. We can vividly show the way we feel or what a color looks like, but we can never expound or explicate them. Emotions trigger a change in the color of life, much like the way seasons trigger a transformation in color of nature, which alters our perception of color, and colors are strongly affiliated to emotions in our lives. Isn’t it a bit recursive?

This “color psychology” is used widely in today’s advertising and marketing world to strategically manoeuvre your brain to elicit a desired reaction and create a bond with the brand or product. What’s the first brand/logo that comes to your mind when you think of the color blue? Facebook? Don’t be surprised. According to studies, blue is the favourite color of most people and among all age groups. It is said to create the sensation of trust and security. Lighter blues are calming while darker blues symbolize professionalism and sincerity. Oh.. and also because Mark Zuckerberg is red-green color blind, which, by default makes him see blue the best among the primary colors (Good for him, right?). All this being said, have you ever noticed the color of the “Sign up” button on the home page of Facebook? If not, go take a look now. It’s green! Apparently, green simulates a sense of affirmation on people’s minds and also for a very simple reason that it attracts the eye. Looks like Mark did his fair share of homework on color psychology in marketing Facebook? And it also goes to show that brand recognition takes a tiny precedence over his color blindness(Obviously!). Pretty neat and interesting.

Talking about psychology and colors, I’m bound to write about a phenomenon called synesthesia, a neurological condition in which the stimulation of one cognitive pathway involuntarily elicits a reaction from a second cognitive pathway. In simple words, when you’re made to look at a set of numbers, your eyes send sensory input to your brain (the first cognitive reaction) that helps identifying the numbers. Synesthetes (Fyi, this is what they call people who experience synesthesia) automatically perceive a color associated to each number (the second cognitive reaction). The fact that people can conjure numbers by looking at a spectrum of colors makes it a lot easier for them to memorize numbers! Fascinating, right? There’s another type where people associate musical tones with colors, called sound-color synesthesia. The concept is explained beautifully in Dr. Vilayanur.S.Ramachandran’s book on the human brain called “The Tell-Tale Brain”. The world of colors gets a new lease of life, with synesthetes putting them to use on a whole new level! This is a case where they literally add color to their lives.

These are few random and assorted perceptions of colors in our lives(both metaphorically and literally!). Finishing with a lesser known line.. “Colors. Would it be green or blue today? Maybe white—my favorite. A dark voice in the back of my mind offered no color at all as an alternative. I smothered that voice. The days of no color were simply too hard to bear. I needed color today.”

After all, at the end of the day when you close your eyes, the whole world turns black!