Blue

When I was a kid, my favorite color was blue. Not just any blue, but Crayola Crayon cerulean blue, shown in Figure 2.5. Yeah, I was a weird kid. On the touchy-feely level, blue symbolizes openness, intelligence, and faith. Physiologically, blue has been found to calm people down, but it can also reduce appetite. This effect is probably due in part to the rarity of blue in real food. Aside from blueberries, how many naturally blue foods can you count? Blue, it would seem, is just not a part of Nature’s appetite-inducing palette, so it’s not a great choice for promoting food products. Blue is sometimes seen as a symbol of bad luck and trouble. This emotional color connection is evident in blues music and in the paintings of Picasso’s depression-induced Blue Period. It’s not all about unnatural food colors and downtrodden forms of art, though—blue also has universal appeal because of its association with the sky and the sea. This visual connection with water, sky, and air makes blue an obvious choice for web sites associated with airlines, air conditioning, pool liters, and cruises. Have you ever noticed that blue is the primary color in the logos of IBM, Dell, HP, and Microsoft? The reason for this is that blue also conveys a sense of stability and clarity of purpose ... that is, until you’ve experienced the blue screen of death!

Figure 2.5: There’s just nothing like cerulean