Color!

Well, there were some surprises with my responses to colors.  I think one of the most interesting things about the survey is that I have never thought about some of the items.  Like “inexpensive” and “dignity” and those really abstract items.  And I don’t know why some of those responses popped into my head.  For instance, “dignity”.  Survey results said dark blue.  I had said brown.  But why I said brown, I have NO idea.  That’s what popped into my head when I read it.  But even at the time, I’m thinking, “why brown?”

Some of my answers were just like everyone else.  Pure, expensive, mourning, deity, etc.  But it’s interesting.  There were a couple I was just a touch off on.  I put down dark green for good luck and not regular green.  For high technology, I put dark grey, and the survey said silver.  And then the most surprising was nausea.  I put muted green-yellow, and the survey said muted yellow.  I laughed pretty hard at how close I came!

Then there was my thought process with deity.  I of course, put down white.  And yeah, there’s the angels and the pics of God in a white flowing robe, and all that, but when I thought about it, my initial reaction was white marble.  I love history, and on my own have studied the old cathedrals.  I visited Notre Dame in Paris at one point, and when I was thinking about deity, I thought, “that’s why I’m thinking white!”  I was there on a bright sunny day, and the church was so white against the blue sky.  Here’s one of my pictures.  Churches are so much more tangible than just an idea or a picture.

And then for good tasting, the survey showed Red (tomato) as the favorite.  My choice immediately was green.  I love vegetables, in particular, cucumbers and salads.  

Getting to the printing stage of things, I started thinking about when the therapy dog group I belong to did a new brochure a few years ago.  I was part of the group that decided the technical part of the printing.  One thing that we had to decide on was 1,2 or 4 colors.  So when Angelica was talking about the printing process for these colors, I was somewhat familiar.  (Only to a point, though.  I’m certainly not an expert!)  At the time, we decided to do two printings; one batch in 4 color and one in 1 color.  We made the decision to do this because of the different activities and events we were going to hand them out at.  If we were at a huge event where people just wanted info on the group, we’d put out the 1 color brochures.  If we were at a smaller, dog or healthcare specific event, we’d put out the 4 color ones.  

We also decided on paper at the time.  Chapter 14 of WSINYE has some great information on paper (that I wish I had had when we were making decisions)!  One sentence stood out.  “Paper is sexy.” (p. 239)  And as crazy as that sounds, I agree.  There are SO many different kinds.  For the 4 color printing, we chose a coated paper that shone.  It really made our brochure pop!  And then for the 1 color, we just did a standard uncoated, but we did make it heavier weight to hold up better than just standard copy paper.  If any of you read, you know how the difference in a page or type of paper can determine the quality of the book.

Anyway, this was an interesting exercise.  And again, I wish I had known about all the printing and paper stuff when we did our brochure!