The Colour of Nostalgia

The Colour of Nostalgia

A project designed and created by Brandon Smith in fulfilment of the MA Graphic Design ‘Resolution’ module at the University of Portsmouth.

About me

I am from Cheltenham currently studying MA Graphic Design at the University of Portsmouth, this project was created for the Resolution module for the MA. Prior to starting my MA, I graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a BA (Hons) degree in Digital Marketing.

Throughout my MA I have developed and learned so much about graphic design, I have also learned a lot a lot about colour theory and nostalgia thanks to this project. I would like to thank all the staff at the University of Portsmouth who helped print this book.

My portfolio can be found at: www.brandonsmithdesign.co.uk.

Acknowledgements

The colours that are shown in this book are based on the survey responses from 100 respondents, this project could not have been created without every one of these responses and so I would like to thank all 100 respondents who took part in this study and helped create the large palettes of colours shown in this book. I would also like to thank the other MA Graphic Design students for their valuable feedback and for giving advice when needed, particularly as graphic design is a subject that is fairly new to me. The staff in Eldon Building of the University of Portsmouth were also helpful throughout this project, in particular helping with the printing and giving advice on how files should be saved.

My particular thanks go to Mike Harkins for all of his support and guidance throughout this project, and for giving me advice on typography, book design, idea generation, printing, and fundamentals of InDesign which helped immensely. I would also like to thank Eloise Faux for her support and words of encouragement when I felt demotivated. I would also like to thank members of my family for being there for me and for helping to spread the survey, namely Derrick Smith, Kim O’Doherty, Emma Hanley, Lilana-Hanley Smith, Jack Beasant, Darren Hughes, Tracy Bowen, Chris Bowen, Leslie Smith, Anna Smith, Robert Faux, Carol Faux, and Sharon Baines.

Contents Page

About the book

What starts as light travelling to our retina, our three types of cone cells allow us to see about 100 different shades which amount to around one million combinations of colour.

Colour has been extensively researched in relation to human emotions, with many proving that colours can influence both emotional states as well as behavioural traits. The effects of colour also influence how we perceive people, our taste, our perception of temperature, our performance, and can also influence our decisions. While people may feel ‘blues’ to indicate sadness or see ‘red’ when feeling angry, there is currently no research on the colours people associate with the complex emotion that is ‘nostalgia’.

This book contains various information graphics with the purpose of seeing which colours people generally associate with nostalgia or with nostalgic memories. The colours that you will see in this book have been extracted directly from the survey, with the collected data being the Hex colour codes of the colours chosen by participants.

The book starts with the introduction section, which will explore the demographics of the respondents in this study, this will include the age of the respondents, the gender, and the country in which they live. These have been presented as forms of information graphics to give a more visual reading experience and to present creative ways of handling data.

The next section of the book will investigate the emotion of ‘nostalgia’, where various information gathered from the survey will be presented. Other information on the emotion will also be discussed in this section to help give you a better understanding on the origins and applications of this emotion. This section also includes information graphics based on the data extracted from the survey, some of this data is qualitative rather than quantitative and so gives a more personal perception on what specifically the respondents think back to when feeling nostalgic. Some of the information that is explored in this section includes the most frequent triggers of nostalgia and what people feel nostalgic about, or think about when nostalgic.

The next part is the main focus of this book and looks at all the colours that were extracted from the survey. This section will include an introduction which will explain how and where the colours were gathered from, as well as how the section is presented. There will then be five sub-sections which will present five palettes of 100 colours in relation to nostalgia; these being the respondents favourite childhood colours, their favourite colours now, a colour they find nostalgic, the colour of their first bike, and the colour of their favourite childhood toy. These questions were asked as research suggests the activity of riding a bike for the first time and having a favourite toy are one of the most memorable experiences from our childhood. This section heavily focuses on the colours people associate with these memories and have been presented as forms of colour palettes.

The final section of this book looks at a small test where respondents were asked to try and choose what colour the Coca-Cola and McDonald’s logos are. These logos were used as everyone would be familiar with these iconic logos, yet what this test investigates is how respondents remember these colours and how different their memory of the colours are compared to the actual colours of the logos. This is only a small section of the book but is an interesting test of colour memory, each respondent’s chosen colour has been included in this. The actual colour of the logo has also been included.

Finally, a glossary of all of the colours that have been extracted can be found at the end of this book, which includes the Hex colour codes for every colour. Every one of these colours have been gathered from the survey through a colour picker tool. As well as a glossary of colours, there is also a bibliography and a recommended reading list, the publications shown here have been used as inspiration for this project.

I hope this project is useful for those in the field of graphic design or marketing, and I hope anyone with an interest in colour psychology or nostalgia will find this book informative and refreshing.

Why is this book relevant?

While there have been numerous books and studies exploring the effects colour have on emotions, there is no studies which explores the colours people associate with nostalgia and the colours people remember from certain childhood experiences. Therefore this book is the first of its kind and offers a fresh and illustrative view on nostalgia, a subject which has often been discussed in more psychological journals rather than visual books.

About the study

Now that we have discussed what this book is and how it has been structured, I will now discuss the study and how this has been conducted and evaluated.

The ‘study’ that will be referenced throughout this book is an online survey that has been completed by 100 respondents, each ranging in age and background. The idea was to have a large pool of respondents so this research isn’t limited to just those living in the UK, but instead looks at colours chosen by people from around the world. The demographics of these respondents will be discussed in the following pages of this section.

The questions that were asked in the survey are based on the subject of nostalgia and was designed to allow the respondents to have freedom of being able to choose any colour they were thinking of. To achieve this freedom of choice, no multiple choice questions were asked in relation to colour, instead, respondents was able to choose the exact hue, lightness and saturation of the colour with use of a colour picker tool provided by form building site ‘Jotform’. After respondents chose the colour, a Hex colour code was then generated, this code was used as the data for this project.

Once 100 responses were gathered, the colour codes were collected and were used to create palettes of colours for the five sections previously mentioned. Through a long and tedious duration of creating the colour blocks, it was ensured that each respondent’s chosen colours could be easily found depending on the order they were in with the respondents. This means that the first respondent to complete the survey, for example, is represented as the first square (top left) in the colour palette for every subsequent palette. This was done to ensure the colours had a specific order and no bias was used in the organisation of the palette, giving a more chaotic, yet organised, view of the data.

Every response is anonymous as no names or contact details were collected from the survey, meaning none of the respondents can be identified by neither myself or anyone reading this book.

Age

When distributing the survey, the goal was to gather respondents ranging in age to investigate whether there is any patterns between the colours 18-24 year olds choose compared to 45-54 year olds, for example.

While respondents of all ages have taken part in the study, it is evident that respondents were mostly aged between 18 and 34, taking up 80% of total respondents. This may be because of the platform the survey was

distributed through or could be a result of having an online survey.

Therefore, as 80% of participants in this study was aged between 18 and 34, the data that will be presented is based on mostly young adults.

The age groups have been represented in bubbles, where the larger the bubble represents the more respondents.

The Colour of

Gender

The majority of respondents (56%) were female, with 39% being male and 5% choosing not to state their gender.

Although there are more female respondents than male, the difference isn’t too big and so the colours that will be presented later are not too influenced on gender.

The results actually found that the gender did not change depending on the gender, for example, with the

‘Nostalgic’ colours and the ‘favourite childhood toy section’ there were a lot of similarities that it is difficult to identify the male or female respondents.

Location

The map above with the complimentary colour key present where in the world the respondents completed the study. The aim of this was to not limit the responses to one location but instead to try and get as many international responses as possible to gather a larger pool of colours.

As you can see, the majority of respondents were from the UK, which was to be expected as the study took place here. Exact locations within the country were not collected as these had no purpose and also helps maintain the anonymity of the respondents.

It is clear that the majority of respondents are European, with 39 respondents being from the UK, 16 from the

Netherlands, 8 from Germany, 2 from Poland, 1 from Russia, and 1 from France; making a total of 67 respondents from Europe.

16 total respondents were from North America, with 15 being from the USA and 1 from the Dominican Republic. There was also 4 respondents from Asia, 2 being from India, 1 from Japan and 1 from Israel. 1 respondent was from Australia and 5 respondents did not share location.

While the number of respondents from each country can be found, it does not show which respondent came from where, so separate graphics based on location and colour preference could not be made.

Ben Schneiderman

‘Visualization gives you answers to questions you didn’t know you had.’

What is nostalgia?

Now that the study has been discussed, what exactly is nostalgia? The common feeling of nostalgia we feel at times may seem normal today, however when the term was first introduced in the early 17th century, it was considered an illness. The word ‘nostalgia’ was first used by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer in his 1688 medical dissertation, where he coined the term a medical or neurological disease. It was thought the symptoms of this ‘disease’ included persistent thinking of home, bouts of weeping, anxiety, anorexia, insomnia, irregular heartbeat and smothering sensations.

This idea of nostalgia being known as a medical condition continued through the early 19th century, where it was then considered a form of melancholia or depression. By the 20th century it was then long equated with homesickness, and it was not until the late 20th century that homesick and nostalgia were seen as different concepts and had different definitions.

Today, a lot of we understand about nostalgia is thanks to a collection of researchers named Clay Routledge, Tim Wildschut, Constantine Sedikides, and Jacob Juhl. Each of these researchers have a PhD in psychology and have been studying nostalgia for over a decade, cowriting a large number of articles found in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Interestingly, they label nostalgia as a bitter-sweet emotion (simultaneously happy and sad), as the emotion is frequently triggered by poor mental health and feeling lonely or down, yet has been shown to improve the

mental health of people when it is being experienced. To add to this, a study conducted by the National Trust and the University of Surrey used MRI scans to see how feelings of nostalgia effect our brain. This was achieved by twenty participants bringing in photographs of ten meaningful places and ten important objects, their brains were then scanned when looking at each. The conclusion of this study was that was that photographs of meaningful places had more of an effect, triggering a boost in the amygdala (a key area for processing emotion), the Media Pre-frontal Cortex (an area responsible for activating emotions and memories), and also in the Parahippocampal (a part of the brain linked to memory formation and feelings of self). This explains why feeling nostalgic can feel therapeutic and comforting, despite commonly being triggered by poor mental health.

As you can see, nostalgia is a very complex emotion with an interesting history and numerous benefits, however there is still more research that can be done on the subject, and there is a particular lack of research on nostalgia in the creative industry, thus I hope this book is useful or interesting to those with an interest in design or colours.

The rest of this section will explore some of the key triggers of nostalgia and what people usually think about when feeling nostalgic. This research was collected through the study which had 100 respondents.

Triggers

Respondents were asked to choose which activities they feel frequently triggers feelings of nostalgia. Respondents were able to choose more than one activity. Looking at the results, the most common trigger of nostalgia is listening to familiar music, chosen by 79 respondents; this was then closely followed by looking at old photographs chosen by 78 respondents.

The joint third most commonly picked trigger of nostalgia is watching certain movies or TV shows and through conversations with friends and family, both being chosen by 67 respondents.

Exactly half of respondents found that visiting comforting environments often trigger nostalgia for them. As for the less common triggers only a quarter of respondents found past clothing and colours or patterns to be a frequent trigger of nostalgia.

‘other’ option gave respondents the ability to type their own trigger that was not listed, 11 respondents typed an activity in this option. Interestingly, of the 11 who chose to type their own trigger, 7 of them mentioned ‘smells’ and how certain scents trigger nostalgic memories. This is the only activity that was mentioned by multiple respondents in this section, other triggers (which were mentioned by 1 respondent each) include ‘social

memories’, ‘food’, ‘watching old football’, and ‘reading old texts’.

‘Getting my first car. Riding my bike in the alley as a child. My pink bedroom.’ ‘Meeting with friends and memories of my grandparents.’ ‘Being a kid again and watching certain TV shows every day after school to older coverage can make me think of what things I did years ago.’ ‘How football used to be a physical the fire in the morning, the smell of cooking baking.’ ‘My children growing up, past holidays, friendships.’ had friends around.’ ‘Spending time with old friends when I was in senior school.’ ‘I look mostly at the is how I used to feel. Carefree. From making random plans to just enjoying the sunset. My life revolved of my daily life now.’ ‘Lots of things can make me feel nostalgic, looking at vintage toys, VHS cassettes, feel very nostalgic. Also if I see a blue and yellow BMX.’ ‘Just childhood in general.’ ‘Childhood Senior ago, the people and how things have changed.’ ‘School and University days.’ ‘Old friends and nights out.’ in Chinese).’ ‘I think about my childhood or memories with my grandparents who passed away.’ ‘Playing find exactly what I wanted to build something.’ ‘Childhood, playing outdoors in woodlands and making and old friends.’ ‘The last time I was home, a couple years back.’ ‘Partying with friends that I have lost food I had as a child (like the lemon meringue tart which is bright yellow). I think about the best surf years ago when I was working in an office (bright purple) with my team around me, before covid and military base and when I remember those times, I feel nostalgic.’ ‘Whenever I visit my grandmother’s having sleepovers and playing video games with friends and family.’ ‘I often think about time spent with with my brother.’ ‘Disneyland trip with all my cousins for a childhood birthday.’ ‘Childhood.’ ‘BBQ with songs from my youth.’ ‘I mainly think of my childhood animals, games I played with friends and school I started college back in person for the first time since the pandemic.’ ‘Childhood memories.’ ‘Pleasant parks I used to go to with friends back in middle school.’ ‘Childhood moments with friends.’ ‘Holidays.’ those with my parents and siblings.’ ‘I think back to happy memories; the scenes I remember are like to 2000s songs, visiting old school.’ ‘I think about my school years and the fun moments I had with friends history.’ ‘Mainly childhood and school memories.’ ‘My first year in university.’ ‘Last meeting with some from when I was a child.’ ‘Having fun with friends back in high school.’ ‘Pokemon and also the ‘Nostalgic’ ‘Childhood.’ ‘When my dad used to take me to football games with the car and we had really loud rock ‘Playing outside with my brother as we were really good at riding bikes and we could do different stunts.’ friends - typically from when we were high school-aged. Songs or TV show clips and movie scenes also ‘Holiday spot that my family has been returning to since my father was a child.’ ‘Childhood at the creek.’ school.’ ‘Food.’ ‘I have been living in Germany for eight years now but I’m moving back to New Zealand My first German course and the time I passed my advanced German exam.’ ‘I mostly feel nostalgic when think about memories from then. So I mostly feel nostalgic about my childhood/teenage years.’ ‘Have family.’ ‘My time in elementary school or high school.’ ‘When I was 20.’ ‘My time in London, where I was of these memories.’ ‘Thinking of my childhood.’ ‘When I go to a plane I think about my first time I’m holidays, middle school, happy and sad moments, moments that stayed with me all the years.’ ‘Watching It’s Sailor Moon.’ ‘Walks with my grandma / specific friends.’ ‘I remember tunes earlier in adulthood and smell of hops permeating the car.’ ‘Childhood.’ ‘Time as a family.’ ‘Going to the seaside as a child when dog and he passed away in the first lock down so I always get happy and find memories when I’m in the little.’ ‘I tend to think back to my old friends or my time in school.’

and playing football after school.’ ‘Childhood memory of places I’ve been and foods I’ve tasted.’ ‘Good school.’ ‘Some music can sometimes make me think of my childhood, also in a sporting context listening physical sport.’ ‘The music when I was a teen, going back to when I was a child, memories of my nan lighting friendships.’ ‘Holidays with my mum and dad when I was little. Certain meals my mum used to cook when I the time I spent with my friends back in India. They were people with whom I have grown. The reason revolved around that. Here, mostly whenever I go to see the sunset, it reminds me of that time. It’s been part cassettes, Laser discs, retro video game consoles, I like watching YouTube videos of old tech which makes me Senior school and friends.’ ‘Hangouts with family and friends.’ ‘I think about the road I lived on 70 years out.’ ‘Where I grew up (Hong Kong), I think about the city (big buildings, hustle n bustle, people talking ‘Playing with a huge box of assorted lego, looks of different colours in the box that I would dig through to making dens.’ ‘Sometimes I remember my happy childhood. I had nice grandparents.’ ‘Mainly childhood contact with.’ ‘I think about having a big house and garden where my parents lived, I think about the surf session I had in my life and never found this feeling again (blue sea, warm sun). I feel nostalgic of 2 isolation and losing my job.’ ‘The time I spent in high school.’ ‘When I was a child, I was living in a grandmother’s house, I just think of the older days, when I was younger.’ ‘Vacation with my father.’ ‘I think back to with my grandparents after I went to their house after school.’ ‘Sleepovers at my grandparents house with a big group of friends.’ ‘The primary school with all my friends (from the past).’ ‘Most music, certain school.’ ‘The smell of tide pods and a certain candle brings me back to November/December of 2021 when ‘Pleasant childhood memories (multiple).’ ‘My first date.’ ‘Kindergarten watching trains with grandma.’ ‘Old ‘Holidays.’ ‘Parachute game.’ ‘Childhood photos.’ ‘I think of certain memories from my childhood. Specifically, movie scenes, where there are different cuts and I think of multiple memories like a movie.’ ‘Listening friends.’ ‘My favourite football team winning their last trophy (2009).’ ‘Memory of my previous sporting some of the friends I’m no longer in contact with.’ ‘Usually childhood memories.’ ‘Tamagotchis and sweets ‘Nostalgic’ song by ‘Simple Plan’.’ ‘When I smell a certain perfume I think about my time studying abroad.’ rock music on, making me feel like a very cool person.’ ‘Christmas with family when I was younger.’ stunts.’ ‘Various events in University, such as living in my dorm in the first year.’ ‘Nice moments with also trigger nostalgic memories about the past with friends and family/loved ones.’ ‘My ex-girlfriends.’ creek.’ ‘Summer holidays with my family.’ ‘My father and my childhood.’ ‘High grass.’ ‘Friends from high Zealand this August. I have found myself thinking about my first day and weeks in Germany eight years ago. when I listen to music and I think about my childhood, or when I talk to my old high school friends and ‘Have a party with my friends.’ ‘Music and food primarily bring nostalgia about times I’ve spent with my was so happy. I was very productive but also did a lot of things with friends. I sometimes watch videos on a plane with my family and my uncle and auntie were there as they just got married.’ ‘To childhood ‘Watching my favourite anime series from my childhood + reading the manga and listening to the soundtrack. and a few good memories from childhood.’ ‘Driving past a hop farm on the way to school as a kid, the when I visit the beach.’ ‘I feel nostalgic when I’m at my girlfriend’s in the sun because it reminds me of my the situation.’ ‘I think back to being a child visiting my grandparents and to when my children were

ThoughtsThe previous double page spread (pages 28 and 29) present every response that was collected when respondents were asked to type what they commonly think back to when feeling nostalgic. Words that frequently appeared were then highlighted (such as ‘childhood’ and ‘family’). What this shows us is that despite the respondents coming from all over the world and ranging in age, it is evident there is plenty of nostalgic thoughts that come up very frequently.

To show some of the most frequent words that came up, the word cloud on the left presents the most used words within the responses, with the more times a word was used the larger it appears in the word cloud.

This shows us that people often feel nostalgic about their childhood, family, friends, and school.

However, this word cloud simply shows the most commonly shown ‘words’ themselves in the responses, it does interpret them to show the most popular subjects of the thoughts. For example, respondents used words like ‘grandparents’ or ‘siblings’, these words can then be interpreted to just ‘family’.

Therefore, a separate list has been made to show the most popular subjects of nostalgia, the top three being childhood (mentioned by 39 respondents), family (mentioned by 29), and friends (mentioned by 27).

Ben Schneiderman

‘Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.’

Colours

Colour organisation

As you can see on the left, the organisation of the colours are structured to show what colour each respondent chose in the survey. Much like how many of us read text in a book and how this text is structured, the colours are placed from left-to-right based on the respondent that chose them. Therefore, the first respondent to have completed the survey is shown on the upper-left corner, their chosen colour for each question is then shown in this same position. This continues for all 100 respondents, thus meaning the end colour in the grid (the bottom-right) is the colour the 100th respondent chose in the study. This strict organisation prevents the palette being biased in any way and also gives you the chance to see any patterns in each respondents colour choice for each question.

About the colours

Now that we have discussed how the survey was conducted, some demographics on the respondents, and research on nostalgia gathered from the survey, we can now begin to explore the colours that have been gathered from the study. As previously mentioned, this section will consist of five subsection each exploring different questions. Each question will have 100 responses, thus generating 100 colours for each, which means there will be a total of 500 colour codes that have been extracted and used to illustrate palettes as forms of information graphics.

Every colour that has been extracted are RGB colours, however these have been converted to CMYK colours for the purpose of printing. Although the colours you will see in the book are CMYK, there are QR codes that can also be found in the book that will direct you to a PDF image showing the colours in their original RGB form.

‘What was your favourite childhood colour?’

Colour is a big part of our childhood. Our favourite childhood colours can stem from many different contexts. Some believe that our colour preferences constantly change as we grow and mature, while others believe our preferences are socially constructed. It is also common for our childhood favourite colour to be the colour of a toy we owned, or the colour of a football team we grew up watching.

There are many factors that can influence our colour preferences when growing up, however this question asks respondents to choose one colour that they

remember being their favourite when growing up. Having a palette of colours that people can both feel a personal connection to, and remind them of their childhood, can help provoke nostalgic feelings through colour.

As our childhood favourite colour is so important to our growth and memories of our childhood, this section will explore the first set of colours that can be related to the feelings of nostalgia in this five-part exploration of colour.

Childhood Colours

What was your favourite childhood colour? This palette of colours consists of 100 colours that were chosen by 100 respondents to visually answer this question.

As opposed to simply saying blue, red, pink, etc., this method of collecting colours has allowed respondents to choose exactly the colour they were thinking of with freedom to edit the shade, brightness and saturation. There are a number of occasions, however, where respondents have chosen, what this project describes them as, ‘basic colours’. These are colours that respondents chose, such as blue (#0000FF) but did not make any changes to it. Of course, these colours may be well representative of what they were thinking and so felt no need to alter them, however it does mean that there are multiple of certain colours.

These colours show us that blue is a popular childhood favourite colour, along with pink and purple. In fact, these colours were so popular that they made up almost 60% of all the colours. The most favoured childhood colour, however, was blue, with over a third of respondents choosing a variation of this colour.

Some of the least favoured childhood colours include black and white (each selected by 2 respondents), yellow (chosen by 6 respondents), and green (chosen by 10 respondents).

Warmer colours such as red and orange were also fairly popular with respondents, with around 20 respondents choosing one of either orange or red.

RGB version

To see the original RGB colours that were chosen by respondents, please scan the QR code, you will then be directed to a PDF image of the colours in their original RGB form as opposed to the converted CMYK used for printing. A QR code will be found alongside each palette to show the original colours collected from the survey.

Scan for RGB

Female Respondents

We’ve all heard the stereotype that ‘blue is for boys’ and ‘pink is for girls’, but how does this effect our favourite colour growing up? This section will look at the comparison between the colours chosen by female respondents and those chosen by male respondents.

Female respondents typically favoured the colour purple when growing up, closely followed by shades of pink. As previously mentioned, there were 56 respondents and so this graphic shows each of their chosen colour. Of the 56 females, 23 chose either pink or purple, this is under half of female respondents.

Male Respondents

On the contrary, the majority of male respondents chose blue as their favourite childhood colour, with just under half of the 39 males choosing a shade of the colour.

Red was also popular amongst males, with one third of respondents choosing red/orange over blue. When it comes to the colours preferred by males during their childhood, it looks as though it is generally between blue or red.

Females, on the other hand, had a bit more variety with their colour choices, with colours such as yellow and pink that did not appear once in the male colours, though they often favoured pink or purple.

While the previous palettes showing each of the respondent’s favourite childhood colours were structured based on the order of respondents, this made it look quite chaotic and difficult to interpret. Therefore to get a clear view on how frequently each colour was picked, another palette was created using exactly the same colours, but this time it is organised by colours rather than the respondent.

This ‘organised view’ of the colours has been created for each of the five palettes, along with A1 posters accompanying each; these are available through QR codes found alongside the RGB QR code.

Scan for RGB Scan for A1 poster

Childhood blue

As discussed, the colour blue was picked by more respondents than any other colour, despite the study being predominantly completed by females. This spread shows all of the shades of blue that were chosen in response to the question ‘what was your favourite childhood colour?’.

‘What is your current favourite colour?’

With respondents being asked what their favourite childhood colour was, it seemed natural to ask what their favourite colour is now, to see how much it has changed.

Whether its experiences, culture, friends, family, or memories, there is a lot of factors that can influence our preferences over time, especially in colour.

However, research by Wildschut, Sedikides and Arndt suggest that our preferences from our youth have an influence our purchase decisions later in life.

Therefore this simple question asking respondents to choose their favourite colour now after choosing their favourite childhood colour, shows us how colour preferences can change over time.

Favourite Colours

Looking at the results from the respondent’s current favourite colour, it is evident that blue, again, is the most frequently picked colour. Variations of blue were chosen by over a quarter of respondents.

Pink and purple were also popular, with one fifth of respondents choosing a variation of these colours. However, one detail that is evident is that there are a larger variety of colours in this palette compared to the childhood colours.

Where previously, blue, pink and purple made up over 60% of favourite childhood colours, they are less popular with the current favourite colours and don’t even make up half of the colours.

Another striking difference is the popularity of the colour green within these colours. Green was not as popular in the childhood colours, and the number of times green was chosen has almost doubled.

The number of times black was chosen has tripled, from being chosen twice in childhood colours to 7 times in this question. White has also tripled.

Scan for RGB

Childhood Favourite Colours

The childhood colours have a more vibrant and bold feel to them, with blue, pink and purple evidently being the most popular picks and taking up the majority of the palette. To compare how each respondent’s preference changed, each of their picks are found in the same position (e.g., the top left colour is from the 1st respondent and the bottom right colour is the 100th respondent).

Current Favourite Colours

Although blue is the most popular colour, the current favourite colours start to show a bit more variation, with the increased amount of green, black, white, and even using brown for the first time. This palette is not as vibrant as the childhood colours however it is interesting to see how our colour preference can change over time.

Scan for RGB Scan for A1 poster

Favourite blue

Not only was blue the most picked favourite childhood colour, blue was also the most picked favourite current colour. Again, despite being mostly female respondents, it is evident that blue is most commonly people’s favourite colour. This spread shows all the shades of blue that were chosen by respondents.

‘What is the one colour that you would say is most nostalgic to you?’

If yellow is happy, green is healthy, blue is calming, what colour do we find nostalgic? Whether it’s the colour of your old school uniform, the colour of your first car, the colour of a warm sunset, there are always colours that will stick with you in your memories.

Asking respondents to choose just one colour they feel is most nostalgic to them may be a difficult question to answer, however getting them to choose one colour will help find what colour they mostly feel nostalgic towards.

We have already discussed that the most popular

childhood colour is blue, so will there be a pattern of blue also being considered a nostalgic colour?

This section will show all 100 colours that were collected in response to this question.

Nostalgic Colours

Looking at the colours respondents found to be nostalgic to them, it is evident that the warmth of red and orange is dominant in the palette, taking up nearly a quarter of all colours. Adding yellow to the popular colours, these warm sunset colours make up over 35% of all colours shown in the palette.

Green is another popular colour chosen by respondents, chosen by nearly a fifth of respondents. The popularity of green is likely due to it being the colour of grass and may remind them of parks or gardens from their youth.

Pink and purple have been popular picks again for this question, making up 17% of colours in the palette. The least common picks are black, white, and brown.

Looking at the patterns in the colours so far, it is evident that our preferences during childhood are mostly cool colours, with blue and purple being the most popular childhood favourite colour. However it appears this preference of cooler colours are not considered nostalgic; instead, warm colours such as red, orange, pink and yellow dominate the colours the respondents find nostalgic.

Scan for RGB

Scan for RGB Scan for A1 poster

Warm

Many people feel that ‘sepia’ is the colour of nostalgia, the results from this study can support this idea as it appears warmer colours are considered the most nostalgic to the respondents. This spread shows most of the warm colours that were chosen by respondents, these are the colours that consist of red and orange. Giving a warm feeling of nostalgia, the reasoning respondents gave for choosing these colours were that they feel nostalgic when seeing a sunset.

‘What was the colour of your first bicycle?’

Across various surveys, learning to ride a bike is often regarded as one of the most memorable childhood memories. Therefore this is the next memory being investigated in relation to colours that can be considered nostalgic to the respondents.

While many childhood bikes usually contain multiple colours, this questions asks respondents to choose the one colour that sticks out the most or is the main colour on the body of the bike.

This test will help see what colours would remind people of their first bicycle and in turn, help evoke a feeling of nostalgia.

However, although riding a bike is one of the most common experiences in our childhood, there will also be those who never learned how to ride a bike. These have been considered and so respondents had the option to choose #FFFFFF (white) if they cannot answer the question.

First Bike Colours

The colours that were gathered from respondents being asked ‘what was the colour of your first bike’ is intriguing, as the palette of colours appear to be ‘patchy’ due to the overwhelming results of white and black. In fact, the amount of respondents who chose either black or white make up over a third of answers.

As previously mentioned, participants used white (# ) if they did not remember or did not learn to ride a bike. All responses have been included in this graphic as it is impossible to identify which respondents chose white because that’s the colour they remember their bike being, and which chose white simply because they could not provide a valid answer to the question.

With 19 respondents choosing white, this is the most selected colour, but again, it is impossible to determine whether this was the colour of their bike or not. Therefore, this colour has been excluded from the search for the most popular colour, which leaves pink and purple as the most popular colours of the respondents’ first bikes. A fifth of respondents chose pink or purple in response to this question.

The least popular first bike colour was yellow, which was then followed by green. From looking at the data, it appears most female respondents had a pink or purple first bike, whereas males had a split between red/orange and blue.

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Purple first bikes

The majority of respondents said that their first bicycle was purple. Granted, this study was completed by mostly female respondents, however this is still the most selected colour in relation to this question. This spread shows all of the variations of purple that were chosen to show the colour of the respondents’ first bikes.

‘What colour was your favourite childhood toy?’

Having a favourite toy is something that is very common around the world with children. But why do we become so attached to specific toys when growing up?

To help understand why children have a favourite toy, Fraser Brown, the first professor of Playwork in the UK, wrote a book named ‘Play and Playwork: 101 Stories of Children Playing’. In this book he states how children commonly use a favourite toy as a symbol of a secure past in order to feel more secure in the present day.

As having a favourite toy is such an important memory from our childhood, this is the next and final section in the pursuit of nostalgic colours. Respondents were asked to choose the colour that best depicts their favourite childhood toy, the following pages will show the colour of every respondent’s favourite colour.

Favourite Toy Colours

It is evident that the majority of respondents remember their favourite childhood toy being warm colours rather than cool colours. There’s no doubt when looking at the colours that the most popular choice of colour is shades of brown. In fact, over a quarter of the colours are different shades of brown.

Reds and oranges were also very popular amongst respondents, amounting to over a fifth of responses. The combination of yellow and cream colours also amounted to over 15% of responses, meaning the combination of brown, yellow, red and orange make up over two thirds of the whole study results.

Colours like blue and pink made up around 28% of the colours in total, with their being an even split between blue and pink/purple. The least chosen colours were green which was only chosen by 5%, and then few responses choosing white and even less choosing black.

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Teddy brown

Brown was the most selected colour when respondents were asked what colour was their favourite childhood toy. The popularity of brown was to be expected as many children’s favourite toys are often stuffed animals, this nostalgic spread of colours shows each shade of brown that was selected by respondents. As the colour brown was not listed in the ‘basic’ colours, each one of these colours are unique to the respondents as they chose the hue, saturation and brightness of the colour.

The Colour of Nostalgia

Childhood

Nostalgia

Favourite toy

First bike

‘Colour is a power which directly influences the soul.’

Wassily Kandinsky

Colour memory

‘. . . we can differentiate millions of colours, but to store this information, our brains have a trick . . . we tag the colour with a coarse label. That then makes our memories more biased, but still pretty useful.’

John Hopkins University

Introduction

Throughout the study we have looked at the colours 100 respondents remember from specific childhood memories and nostalgic feelings, but how reliable is our memory when it comes to remembering colours?

Colour expert and author Michel Pastoureau suggests that our visual memories have lost their definite colours, and that it is our imagination that puts colours to our memories. Another famous author, Joseph Albers, wrote in his book ‘Interaction of Colour’ that ‘it is hard, if not impossible, to remember distinct colours’. This is something that this section looks to explore, by asking respondents to choose the exact colour they think two well-known logos are. This is an interesting test and is something that has not been shown in graphic design form before.

Why exactly is it is so hard to remember precise colours from our memories? In a study by Johns Hopkins University, it is explained how we have trouble remembering specific shades of a colour as our brains tend to store what we’ve seen as one of just a few basic hues.

What this tells us is that our memories are biased in version of ‘best’ versions of colours over the colours they actually saw; meaning if we were to see something that was navy blue, then our brain would categorize this as blue and so our memories would make the colour ‘appear more blue’ than it actually was.

‘What colour is the Coca-Cola logo?’

The first logo that was used as a test was the Coca-Cola logo. This iconic red logo is well-known worldwide and instantly recognisable. The leading carbonated drink brand is so popular that over 1.9 billion bottles are sold per day in the US alone, with sales in the UK in 2021 amounting to over 229 million pounds.

The Coca-Cola logo consists of both red and white, however respondents were asked to pick which colour they believe the iconic ‘red’ is using a colour picker where they can adjust hue, saturation and brightness. This section will be structured the same as the previous

‘colours’ section, with every respondent being shown in a colour grid.

Along with the colours chosen by the respondents, the actual colour of the logo is also shown alongside the colours, to see how similar or different the respondents colours are to the colour they were trying to remember.

The Coca-Cola memory test was mostly successful, in terms of respondents understanding what colour they were trying to replicate. However, it seems some respondents appears to have misunderstood what the question was asking, with 6 respondents choosing white and 2 respondents choosing black.

Out of all the colours chosen by respondents, shown on the left, 63 chose the basic red colour (#FF0000), meaning they remembered the Coca-Cola logo being the ‘reddest shade of red’. 63 respondents choosing the same colour code is the most recorded out of the whole study, the colour red was expected to be chosen by almost all respondents, however it is interesting that almost two thirds chose exactly the same shade.

In this particular case, the official Coca-Cola logo is not too far off being the reddest shade of red, with a Hex colour code of #F40009.

Coca-Cola red

The official Coca-Cola red colour code in RGB is #F40009 (244, 0, 0), in CMYK is 4, 100, 95, 0, and Pantone is Coke Red. The colour shown on the left (as printed) is shown in CMYK. The official Coca-Cola colours have been collected from the website U.S. Brand Colours.

‘What colour is the McDonald’s logo?’

McDonald’s is the largest food chain in the world with over 38,000 restaurants across 120 countries. The fastfood restaurant is so popular that over 70 million people in the UK eat at McDonald’s every day. So it is safe to assume that everyone is aware of the iconic yellow McDonald’s logo, which is the second logo that has been used for this memory test.

The colour that respondents were asked to try and replicate was the iconic yellow that is used in the McDonald’s logo, as opposed to the red that is also featured in the logo and branding.

Like the previous test, all 100 responses will be shown alongside the actual colour of the logo.

You will see that like the Coca-Cola colours collected from respondents, some did not fully understand the question and so there are some who chose a colour other than yellow. These have all been included.

Every colour chosen by respondents is shown to the left. Like the Coca-Cola test, the majority of respondents successfully chose a yellow colour in their response.

Similar to the Coca-Cola test, almost two thirds of all respondents (64%) chose the same shade of yellow, this being #FFFF00. Some respondents chose a different colour, with 7 choosing red and one choosing white.

However, unlike the official Coca-Cola logo colour, the McDonald’s logo is not as similar to the ‘most yellow’ shade of yellow like the Coca-Cola red was to the ‘reddest red’. The McDonald’s yellow is darker than the yellow most respondents chose.

But what do these tests show us? Like how John Hopkins University concluded about colour memory, these tests also show us that people typically remember the ‘best’ version of the colour they are thinking of. In this particular test, for example, respondents chose the most yellow shade of yellow than the McDonald’s logo actually is.

McDonald’s yellow

The official McDonald’s colour code in RGB is #FFC72C (255, 199, 44), in CMYK is 0, 19, 89, 0, and Pantone is PMS 123 C. The colour shown on the left (as printed) is shown in CMYK. The official McDonald’s colours have been collected from the website U.S. Brand Colours.

‘Many of our visual recollections have lost their definite colours; they are not even blackand-white or black-greywhite [...] our memory classifies shapes, fixes lines and our imagination provides them with colours, colours that they may never have had.’

Michel Pastoureau

Glossary of colours

Each of the five colour palettes that have been discussed in this book have been replicated along with their RGB colour codes for this glossary of colours.

Any replicates of the same colour were not included in this glossary, this glossary was purely made to show the colour codes of each unique colour that was generated by respondents in response to each of the five questions.

Every colour code you see was extracted directly from the survey, thus making it a piece of quantitative data.

This glossary includes ALL unique colour codes gathered from the study, none have been excluded and none have been created by myself. This is data visualisation.

colours

Recommended reading

Pastoureau, Michel

The Colours of Our Memories (Polity, 2022)

McCandless, David Knowledge is Beautiful (William Collins, 2014)

St Clair, Kassia

The Secret Lives of Colour (John Murray, 2016)

Eiseman, Leatrice & Recker, Keith PANTONE The 20th Century in Color (Chronicle Books, 2011)

Itten, Johannes The Art of Color (John Wiley & Sons, 1974)

Albers, Josef

Interaction of Color (Yale University Press: New Haven & London, 2013)

McCandless, David Information is Beautiful (William Collins, 2012)

Image credits