#SWDchallenge: reading into red

SWDchallenge

Jun 1

Color plays a lot of roles when it comes to visualizing information. Aside from making our messages more interesting to look at, color is an essential tool for focusing attention; it can connote additional information, in the way we build our palettes and assign specific hues, shades, and tints to our data; and, it can influence our audience’s perceptions and emotions, due to cultural and conventional associations with particular colors in particular situations.

Given all the potential that color has to enhance or undermine our messages, it’s critical that we take time to be thoughtful and intentional with the way we choose to employ it. That’s why we’ve designed this month’s challenge around colors; or, rather, around one color in particular.

In the 1969 book Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, authors Brent Berlin and Paul Kay investigated how different cultures have different levels of complexity when it comes to naming, or distinguishing among, different colors. All cultures, they posited, have terms in their languages for at least two categories of color: a word for dark (or black), and a word for light (or white). If a culture has at least three terms for color, then the third term is red.

Let’s talk about red: it has powerful associations with both negative and positive things.

It connotes danger, alarm, anger, and loss; we can be on “red alert,” because our business is “in the red,” and our managers are so mad about it that they’re “seeing red,” so we might have to “red light” all of our projects until we recover.

On the other hand, red can be associated with love, marriage, excitement, passion, courage, or good fortune; you might be doing so well that you’re “red hot.”

Or, perhaps you have a personal association with the color red, for its presence in the symbols of things that matter to you. If your favorite team wears red jerseys (or are nicknamed the Reds), or your company’s logo is red, or your nation’s flag is primarily red, you might be drawn to that color; on the other hand, if red is the color of your rivals, competitors, or traditional adversaries, you’ll react to it very differently.

The challenge

This month, your challenge is to create a visualization that uses red as its primary color. Consider all the ways people might instinctively react to it, all the assumptions they might make, and whether you want to leverage those expectations or attempt to subvert them with other design choices. Feel free to use other colors as well, as long as red is the dominant hue.

Submit your entry in the SWD community by 4pm PT on Wednesday, June 30, 2021.

Related resources

There are no shortage of resources out there that will help you think about color in your work—not just the color red, but all of the colors one might use, and how they work together. Here are some of our favorite resources.