Color and Gender

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Over the past few years, I have done my fair share of color research.  Color theory and preference based upon the market that I am designing for is the driving force behind my beginning stages of research and sketching at the start of every new project. It is very important to be aware of the colors that appeal to a company's target audience. It is also important to understand the various emotions that are evoked in your viewers by the colors that you have chosen for a design.  Red is an emotionally intense color and viewing it can actually increase a person's metabolism and respiration rate. On the contrary, blue symbolizes depth and stability, and has the ability to suppress a person's appetite, so it should not be used when promoting food or cooking.

An aspect of color theory that I have never researched before, however, is color preference of males vs. females.  This morning I stumbled across an interesting info-graphic regarding this concept on How About Orange. Although I found all of the data very interesting, the most intriguing part, at least for me, was the research on color naming for men vs. women.  What men perceive as the color "purple" women would name as any of the following six different colors: maroon, plum, eggplant, grape, orchid and lavender. As for the rest of the findings?  Cleveland, it looks like you are out of luck.  For more than 50% of both men and women, orange and brown were perceived as the 'least favorite' and 'cheapest-looking' colors in the entire spectrium.

Check out the info-graphic here.

What's your favorite color?  What is your least favorite color?  What was the name of your favorite crayon?  Honestly, who doesn't love cerulean?  :)

Aquamarine and apricot,