Colours mean what culture says

Product & Experience

Colours, of course, aren’t inherently meaningful. Their meanings are created by the people who live with them. This is why a single colour can mean different things in different places. In the West, white has long been identified with light, life and purity, but in parts of Asia it is the colour of death. In English green is the colour of envy, but in French it is the colour of fear, in Thai of rage, and in Russian, sadness or boredom. In US politics, red is conservative and blue progressive; in Europe, it is the other way around. These kinds of colour meanings also tend to change over time. Most people today think of blue as masculine and pink as feminine, and dress their offspring accordingly. But only a hundred years ago these metaphors were reversed. ‘The generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl,’ one parental guide instructed in 1918. ‘The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.’ All colours are ambiguous - even supposedly unambiguous ones.

In 1918, one parenting guide called pink the stronger colour and recommended it for boys. Blue was delicate and prettier for girls.

The quotation now reads like satire. It was written with the calm confidence of a rule everyone sensible understood.

White can signify purity and life in one setting, death in another. Green has been associated with envy, fear, rage, sadness or boredom across languages and cultures. Political red and blue reverse meaning across the Atlantic. The wavelength stays put while history gets busy.

This makes universal colour psychology one of marketing’s more attractive forms of fortune-telling. Blue means trust. Red means urgency. Green means nature. Add a percentage from a survey nobody can locate and an entire brand presentation can proceed without the inconvenience of context.

Learned associations are real. A warning colour works because people have encountered it repeatedly within a system. Consistency can make recognition fast. But the meaning belongs to people, place, object and moment; it was never stored inside the pigment waiting for a strategist to unlock it.

The 1918 guide remains useful precisely because its certainty expired. Our permanent truths will do the same. A designer in 2126 may find today’s brand manuals beside it in an archive.

The older guide is dated 1918 and printed in black ink.