The Psychology & Meaning of Color

I found the articles that I read to be sort of a recap, but still very interesting and a useful resource. There are many different colors and feelings that they convey, but for now let's focus on the most important colors, the basic ones. Red gives a feeling of fire, energy, danger, heat, warning, and power. Too much of this color can lead to being overwhelmed, so use in moderation. Blue gives the feeling of loyalty, tranquility, trust, peace, sky and sea. Too dark of a blue can convey a variance of the noted feelings. Orange is the color of energy, autumn, construction, joy, and sunshine. This is a color that you can use when trying to do a site for a construction company or for a site where you want a feeling of energy. Green gives the feeling of money, grass, environmentally friendly, healing, freshness, fertility and envy. I don't see how envy falls into the mix, but maybe others would envy somebodies money? Black is a color of power, stability, and strength. It is VERY easy to overwhelm someone with this color, so again use this one with moderation. White can convey creativity and cleanliness. So, my suggestion would be to start out with the design project, and the purpose of the project and any feelings that you might want to convey, then incorporate that into your color selections for your design project. There are many color tools available to us graphic and web designers and my favorite one is the color picker in Photoshop and Illustrator. It lets you basically select any shade of any color in any variance, and it also gives you a hex value so you can use whatever colors you want in your design project.