How colour and shapes change the way we see objects 15th March

How colour and shape change the way we see objects.

From a very early age shape and colour have meaning to us. We learn red, yellow and blue are the primary colours. We are introduced to these colours through play. A lot of very young children's toys are mainly these colours. It can be associated with play, learning and development. This means that these colours can be connected with our early childhood and this gives a feeling of nostalgia. Looking at these colours can subconsciously remind us of this time and in turn give us a feeling of security and happiness. These particular shades and tones of red, yellow and blue remind us of the carefree time in our lives.



These primary colours have also been associated with the three fundamental shapes: square, triangle and circle. These shapes are one of the first things we learn when understanding the world around us. When you first learn to draw three dimensional shapes, one of the techniques to improve our accuracy is to break the object up into simple shapes like square, triangle and circle. Shape can also affect the way we see objects. Shapes having dramatic angles and corners are seen more as 'louder' or sharp, like the triangle. While the circle on the other hand, with its smooth curves, has more of a calm and relaxed feel to it. This fact has been put into use with cartoon artists using it to create different personalities for their characters just by using a particular shape.

One of the well known artists that studied the theory of colour and shape association was Kandinsky with his Yellow-Triangle, Blue-Circle, and Red-Square. It was Kandinsky's idea that there are certain fundamental associations between colours and shapes. He proposed Yellow-Triangle, Blue-Circle, and Red-Square. These associations were formulated introspectively, however, he did conduct his own survey at the Bauhaus in 1923 by distributing questionnaires to his colleagues and students, and found that many of his colleagues agreed with his associations; notable exceptions were his contemporaries, Klee and Schlemmer, who favoured different form-colour combinations. In fact, Kandinsky had already embarked upon a similar attempt to identify colour form associations while still in Russia with the aim to provide the scientific underpinning for his own intuitions. In turn Kandinsky's Yellow-Triangle, Blue-Circle, and Red-Square equation inspired several projects at the Bauhaus in the early 1920s. The most interesting is an amazing baby cradle by Peter Keler. This unusual, and rather dangerous looking design, illustrates the association between shapes and colours, and shows that Kandinky's ideas have mainly historical significance and that forms and colours are still free to the intervals incorporation and do not have universal meaning or correspondence.

http://www.interiordesignipedia.com/color-meanings.html