Psychology of Color
So much has been written about the psychology of color: how colors affect our moods, which colors make us salivate, and which ones help us to relax. All of this research is, of course, valid, useful and readily available. So what do you need a designer for?
If color choices were as easy as consulting a research cheat-sheet, a brand’s color palette could be quickly selected, and every smart company’s brand color would be equally successful. But it’s not that simple.
Choosing colors for a brand often starts with a color swatch book or a computer monitor. Colors are paired up and combined, and they communicate different attributes and elicit different feelings. Paying careful attention to these results, the designer chooses color combinations that best represent aspects of a brand’s image. Collaboration with colleagues first, and ultimately the client, assures that the attributes associated with the colors are appropriate and powerful.
In the end, a brand’s colors, applied to the logo and marketing materials, reflect the personality of the organization. If you think of the logo as a person that greets you, the colors are the clothes it wears. Do they set you at ease? Do they inspire you? Do they make you hungry? How do they affect your mood? And what do they say about your brand?
These are the questions that designers tackle constantly, every day. Investigating what colors work well together in different lights; exploring how different combinations communicate different moods, tones and concepts; noticing how colors on a screen look different from the way they may look on a page. Our design experience gives us the ability to answer these questions quickly and consistently. Perhaps most importantly, an expert designer can listen to your plans for the brand and translate that into colors that bring the brand to life.
Twitter removes 140 Character Limit on Direct Messages
Last month, this announcement from Twitter appeared in its community forums:
Sachin Agarwal, the DM Product Manager @ Twitter announced:
The change is due to occur on an undisclosed date sometime later this month, but already, people are excited. This is what Phil Blum, Time Warner Cable’s Senior Manager of Social Media Customer Care, said in response:
Here’s why this will matter to businesses: Twitter remains on the forefront of real-time communication within social media. But even in real-time, distractions, connection issues, and myriad other things delay the delivery and consumption of each 140 character morsel. So, a quick, four message exchange can potentially take upwards of five to seven minutes…an eternity in the world of Social Media.
The exchange could take even longer when you consider that prior to this past April, the business would first have to ask the user to follow the brand before a DM exchange could take place.
Without that hurdle – and with 10,000 characters available for each DM – (more than 170 times the old limit !), a customer issue that once would be resolved in a 20-minute exchange could potentially be resolved in half the time.
For brands, this change rounds out a series of changes that help position Twitter as an even better solution for brand interaction with consumers, especially in the customer service arena. No longer will frustrated customers need to send three or four messages to communicate their frustration. In short, this will be a win for brands, looking to improve their overall perception on social media, and for consumers, wanting things to happen immediately so they can get back to their days.
Today, 51% of consumers perceive brands that engage with them on social media for customer service issues more favorably overall.* Add in the fact that just under 50% of consumers expect a response from a brand within one hour,** and the implication is clear: every opportunity to optimize each interaction has the potential to lead to a happier customer and a potential brand advocate.
* 2014 State of MultiChannel Customer Service Report, Parature
** Edison Research