The colour of consumption

The colour of WHSmith, crammed with pinks and greens and pale blues, special offers on sharpies and competition prize offers to see one direction. JD Sports tiers of shocking pink and electric blue trainers. Nearby the rather more spaced out, new two storey glass fronted Top Shop has a cooler selection: gold, grey the occassional red amidst the aqua glass container.

How are all these choices made? Who decided what makes cheap and cheerful, what says austerity, shall we be lured in by a tasteful exterior to an aladdins cave of multi sensory visual noise inside Churchill Square? 

the colour of north street

If you take the words and the branding out of the hight street is it less demanding? Might this be the same for people who speak another language or cannot read? Are we so familiar with the brands we can tell what they are just by the colour combinations?

words on north street

High streets bombard us with information. A combination of stimuli: verbal, colour, branding. Naturally, we can filter out as much as we choose. But perhaps this take some effort. Is it any accident that travel agents choose to be located in especially hectic city centre streets? Offering us an escape route?

the colour of whs

Shop windows. Take the words and the brands out and there is often a predominance of red. The colour of attraction, danger, alert? But also bargains, sales. The reds provoke an intuitive response to attract our attention. These environments have a powerful impact. How does colour work on our subconscious? Abstract artists at the beginning of the last century became preoccupied with the colour shape and arrangement of visual images in the belief that: " Colour is a means of exerting direct influence on our soul" Kandinsky,1912