Color can direct attention to an area or item. Look at the pictures to the right and below. What does your attention focus on?s

On the picture to your right, a different color is used to draw the viewer's attention to Texas. 

The method used in the picture on the left consists of enhancing and minimizing its colors to attract the viewer's attention to the ring. However, if only the nail color had been enhanced, the viewer's attention would have been drawn to the nails. 

Color provides media producers with a potent tool for setting a mood. Bright colors create a happy, energetic mood, like the party colors at right. Using the rusty colors of the sunset (below) creates a mellow, serene mood. The misty bluegray colors, as in the picture on the right below, are used to create an erie, gloomy mood.

Color can be used to enhance clarity and readability in text items.

In the example to the right, color is used to separate the topics from the subtopics, making the text more readable.

In the picture to the left, color separates the states on the map, enhancing clarity and making it more aesthetically pleasing. 

Color can be used to code items, locations, regions, and so on.

The graph on the right uses a color key to enable the user to quickly locate the each region's earnings per quarter. 

Color is used in the picture to the left to help easily distinguish between different time zones in the United States. 

Many items are often depicted by their most natural color, for example, blue for water, green and brown for land, and white for clouds. 

The picture to the right is a good representation of the use of color to depict items of nature. It is easy to differentiate between the water, land and clouds.

Color can be used to differentiate things such as good and evil, and male and female. 

In the Ying Yang to the left, good and evil are depicted by black and white. In the figures to the right, male and female are depicted by blue and pink respectively.

Hot and cold are commonly differentiated by red and blue, as in the water faucet to the right.

There are many other examples of the use of color to differentiate. Can you think of any?

DiAnne Bender, Fellow, Motorola University

SDSU Educational Technology

Bender, D. (2003). Why use color? In B. Hoffman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Technology.