In 1979, Clint Eastwood starred in 'Escape from Alcatraz'. Now, if you were the director, and you had the opportunity, would you prefer to build expensive prison sets that are difficult to make appear authentic, or shoot your film on the actual San Francisco prison island?

You would probably choose the original location and so would I.

The interesting fact I am getting to is that many of the interiors were painted a new colour especially for the film. Sound strange? Well, it has to do with what is called 'colour psychology'.

Designers and directors have a vested interest in how scenes affect the emotions of their movie audiences. Incidental music plays an enormous role in almost all film and television (and these days, even current affairs) but one of the less-understood tools they use is colour. Colour affects how we feel.

An experienced graphic or web designer knows how to use colour to enhance your advertising message or your corporate image. For instance, if you are in the food industry, the last colour you would use is blue. Blue is not a food colour. Now, I am sure you can think of exceptions, but generally this is the case.

In training, we were given a list of colours and what they can stand for. Orange has the idea of knowledge or enlightenment. Black obviously stands for darkness and death. Green mostly conveys wealth or prosperity.

If you want to evoke strong emotions such as anger or passion, red is the obvious choice. However, combine that with other colours and you can change the message completely. Red and black might be power equipment. Red and yellow is often used for food. Red, white and blue convey tradition, stability and trustworthiness. Colour combination gets trickier when adding a third colour, but as a designer I rarely go beyond three basic colours in a coordinated corporate image. It all ends up looking like Christmas.

Colours can even have psychological affects on people. Whenever I enter a shop that has classy shopfittings, and they have obviously put some thought into it, I take note of how the colours make me feel. Well, you can use this tool, too. Some shops even keep certain smells in the air because research has shown they make customers feel like buying. Insidious, huh?

As far as design goes, digital photo editing helps with the process. I recently did some promotional material for a personal trainer, whose colours are Cyan, Orange and White. We had two images of young, healthy people, and I changed the colour of their clothing to fit the colour scheme. It made a world of difference to the finished product and the subconscious perception of the viewer, yet on a conscious level it would go totally unnoticed.

Beware, though. The colours you use should also be suitable for your particular industry or product. I have noticed a number of real estate agents pushing the envelope quite a bit. Sometimes this works, other times it has been a disaster!

Finally, a point of interest. What I have been talking about is largely western colour psychology. In Chinese culture, red is not the colour of strong emotion, but of celebration, and white doesn't carry connotations of purity, but of death. I don't suppose they have white weddings in China.