Red Will Survive Valentine’s Day

The color palette in the marina at Fisherman’s Wharf is basically white and blue with some brown and grey highlights, i.e. there is not much color. Two boats caught my eye yesterday, one with yellow trim and another with two patches of bright red. The red details in particular popped out.  As with lipstick, a little red on a boat goes a long way. The power of red lies with its discrete application.

Further down the wharf I came across my first sighting of a Valentine’s Day promotion: chocolate truffles in the shape of Panda bears, boxes and ribbons and red slapped over everything in a pile of gifts. No one with the public’s or the color red's welfare in mind would do this to this color. Having too much of another color thrown at you, blue for example, is just tedious—like having someone talk down to you. Having too much red thrown at you is like being yelled at by a mean cop, or like having a bad dog yap at you over and over again.

How can we explain the annoying overuse of red on Valentine’s Day? Some would call it a tradition, and it is. To me, it seems little more than an embarrassing ‘add-on’. Fortunately, red has a stronger sense of self and purpose than that of the holiday gift marketers. Red is out there working away everyday guiding our eye to many common things that might otherwise go unnoticed. Click here for examples. It has an appetite for Ferraris and things speedy, but it works equally well to stop us in our tracks. Arrogant, selfish, territorial, and never cute, red is rarely claimed as anyone’s favorite color. But its power is usually treated with respect, but not during this holiday period.

Red will survive Valentine's Day.

Now Hiring
I have posted a couple jobs on my homepage, and I’m using my newsletter to get the word out. I’d appreciate it if you would forward this to anyone who might be interested.

Comments

[kozmo]

i disagree completely with this bias against red. what did red ever do to you? red can be warm and inviting, if given the opportunity. red quite often makes other colors look good - they need their old pal red to make them shine.

[Duncan]

Hi Rob,
I agree with you, a little bit of color can certainly go a long way in effectively sending a message to it's intended audience. The overuse of the color red has a marketing effort behind it corresponding to a very short window of time to get a product to market & make a sale. I imagine folks are competing with each other in the marketplace. Your mentioning red & the power it holds, reminds me of an excerpt I read awhile ago in a used cookbook from Dean & DeLuca where they mentioned that sun dried tomatoes are very powerful & a little bit really goes a long way. I think we had a phase here in California where everything was buried under enormous quantities of the stuff. When I think of my experiences in eating courses that contained them, I unfortunately don't have the best recollections. The same comparison could also be made with anchovies, the material needs to be used judiciously and sparingly.
This might be cliche', but I think there's also the human propensity or maybe weakness that if a little bit is good than more is certainly better. Why are most of the boats in a marina blue & white? The gray & brown I'd attribute to primer in it's battle with mother nature & corrosion or rust respectively. If Alexander Calder were around today, would he have tackled the hull of a boat in the same manner that he went after airplane fuselages? Possibly!
Thanks for the interesting article.