Lester Williams Jr, Staff Writer
Does anyone else feel yellow gets overlooked by society? Although it’s a primary color, its fame to some people doesn’t compare to red, represents concepts like love and fire, and blue, which symbolizes depression and water.
Although cultures like the Egyptians valued the color due to associating it with gold and painting their gods in it, yellow has faced many challenges to maintain a positive reputation. Some of the color yellow’s challenges based on the information from colorpsychology.org include eye strain if stared at too long, can be hard to focus on the color and the shades that are too bright, which may cause people to become frustrated.
Yellow has also been linked to many negative traits such as being impulsive, judgmental, egotistical, cowardly, and spiteful. It is due to yellows association with traits that have resulted in the color’s current unpopular reputation.
“There are plenty of yellow things that I enjoy bananas, eggs, cheese, yellow pepper, the sun, and corn, just to list a few,” said Yassin Raffay, a junior majoring in bio-medical & health science. “Fun fact I have learned recently about the color yellow is that it makes you feel happy and spontaneous; maybe that is why I have always felt that attraction to it.” An article entitled “Color and psychological functioning: a review of theoretical and empirical work” by Andrew Elliot, a psychology professor from the University of Rochester, discusses how more research has been done concerning the link between color and psychology.
Elliot’s article also examines the strengths and issues of recent research related to color and psychology, including the history behind the subject, recent studies, and a future research guide.
Elliot wrote that “Theorizing on color and psychological functioning has been present since Goethe (1810) penned his Theory of Colors. He linked color categories to emotional responding (e.g., warmth, excitement).”
Elliot’s research demonstrates that the connection between color and a person’s mind is a topic with a long history in psychology. Colorpsychology.org claims that yellow is one of the most recognizable colors. It is ideal for organizations, especially for marketing services and products that consumers can easily obtain.
Yellow is also viewed as a warm color to some people; in the sense that it causes people to become emotional and can easily capture someone’s attention.
One way for a person to understand the value of colors such as yellow and how it relates to creating fictional characters is by examining the impact of color wheels on their daily lives. According to usability.gov, a website that gives users access to guidelines that help make digital information easier for them to understand and use; colors wheels are an arrangement of colors in a circular shape used to display the relationship between types of colors which includes the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors.
Color wheels are also used to identify color temperature. Understanding color temperature is important colors mentally influence an audience. If a color is identified as warm as yellow, the audience will think closer to them. If the color is labeled as cold as blue, it will appear further away to an audience.
The RGB color wheel, which stands for red, green, and blue, is specially designed for electronic devices when it comes to television. Using this color wheel, designers can create color wheels on screens to help capture and maintain the attention of viewers. Colorpsychology.org also suggests that despite yellow’s reputation in the modern world, it still has played a massive role in society, like helping to create the physical appearance of popular fictional icons due to it being a mental stimulus that improves a person’s memory skills.
These famous yellow fictional characters include but are not limited to SpongeBob from “SpongeBob SquarePants”, multiple characters from “The Simpsons”, and Joy from “Inside Out”.
In the case of SpongeBob SquarePants, he was made yellow to make himself more memorable by contrasting with the blue sky and the blue wallpaper on the inside of his house.
“Yes, yellow did play a major role with SpongeBob because in the show SpongeBob has a happy and joyful personality,” said Jared Grow, a senior majoring in political science. “Yellow represents the qualities of SpongeBob well and make him noticeable as the main character.”
Regarding “Inside Out”, Joy’s character is yellow due to the psychology of color, and this concept suggests that each color is linked to a different feeling. For example, Joy has yellow skin because the color is associated with happiness, and Sadness’s skin is blue because it makes people feel sad.
When it comes to “The Simpsons”, some of the characters were designed in yellow to help television viewers quickly acknowledge the characters when surfing the tv channels trying to find something to watch.
The Simpsons being yellow also helps their contrast with the blue sky and the pink walls in the main family’s house.
“The popularity of a character like SpongeBob can be traced to its nice personality and humor,” said Rogelio Francisco Castro Benitez, a junior majoring in sports business. “Adding the color yellow to it highlights the factors previously mentioned in a positive way as they can be easily perceived through this color.”
SpongeBob SquarePants, Joy from “Inside Out”, and the Simpsons are examples of how the RGB color wheel’s influence can be seen in television. On the RGB color wheel, blue and yellow are labeled as complementary colors, meaning their contrast will help each other stand out.
Next time you’re watching a show or movie with a yellow character, remember to be thankful for the color, which helped multiple fictional characters become household names and beloved icons.
