Talking about Color . . . and Ethics

Ethics is the study of the moral value of human conduct. Theethics of colour use has rarely been featured as a topic ofconcern to the colour community. A limited exception is that ofthe use of colorants in food. This has in the past received muchattention but legislation has now greatly restricted such usage.However, concern is resurfacing, and there are many otherexamples of the possible misuse of colour in food and the widerenvironment. This editorial asks questions in three areas oflife: the environment, food, and marketing in general. © 2006

Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 31, 87–89, 2006; Published online in

Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20204

Key words: ethics; foods; environment; marketing

INTRODUCTION

Colour appearance and colour difference form the founda-tion of all visually perceived attributes of a product, cre-ation, or scene. The power of colour for good is not indoubt. Colour can have a profound effect on an individual’smoods and feelings, and designers exploit these to provideacceptable spaces in which we can live with minimal visualstress and optimal visual comfort.

However, can we hurt people using colour? Is there such atopic as colour ethics? The dictionary definition of ethics islinked in a circular way with moral behavior and with right andwrong. It is to do with the way we treat people, either directlyor via their environment. Examples of questionable ethics aretaken from a number of scenarios concerning use of colour inthe environment, in foods, and in marketing. All examples askquestions of the designer and those engaged in the marketingof objects or services. No answers are given, with the purposebeing to encourage awareness and perhaps debate within thecolour-using community that there might be a dark and sinisterside to our beautiful subject.

This editorial is based on part of the Judd Award addressdelivered at the AIC Congress in Granada in 2005.1 In-cluded are a number of examples subsequently contributedby Congress delegates.

ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN

Examples of ethical questions concerning the environmentare taken from exterior design, interior design, and dress.

Exteriors

In the 1960s there was a movement driven by consumersagainst the use of heavy metals, for example, lead, in paintsand other products, and in the 1970s such usage declined.Although lead is still widespread in exterior and interior,

commercial and domestic environments, this ethical pushfor a less polluted world was successful.

Outstanding are still questions of taste. In certain urbandistricts there are regulations regarding the use of inappro-priate colours in the built environment. The Council of thecity of Bath, England, is strict about the appearance of theRoyal Crescent. Even the hotel in the middle of the Crescentis not permitted to display a signboard; only the presence ofa doorman makes it look different. However, there is onehouse that defies the rules and has a yellow rather than awhite front door. The owner had to go to court in order toestablish her right to paint it the colour she chooses. Is thisowner behaving ethically?

In Mendoza, Argentina business logo colours provide thedriving force for facade coloration in approximately 30% ofbusiness facades. These are provided by Pepsi (red, white,and blue), Coca-Cola (red and white), and McDonalds (red,yellow, and white).2 Regarding exterior colours, how farshould we demand colour coherence within the urban fa-cade? The local council in Miami, Florida, allows onlycertain colours to be used on building facades in the ArtDeco district. Similarly, in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, onlycolours that recall the days of the Old Spanish Empire arepermitted. Stockholm council fathers jealously guard thelook of the city by control of the appearance of businessfacades. In some districts “colour police” are employed.Residents of the Cornish town of Penzance, England, arecampaigning against the council’s drab colour policy. Own-ers want to see houses in the town painted different colours.One householder was threatened in writing with 12 monthsin prison and a £20,000 fine for painting their house palelilac, a colour to which the council objected. Ought indi-viduals and businesses be permitted to paint the exteriors oftheir dwellings with the colours they want?

Interiors

The skilled designer, when requested, will plan a room thatwill make those occupying the space feel comfortable and atease. However, consider the following scenario. In 1973 theUSSR was a police state, we in the west were in the middleof the cold war, and tensions were high. In that year, duringthe registration period for the second AIC Congress at theUniversity of York, England, two men from Moscow,USSR, approached one of the Colour Group (GB) secretar-ies manning the desk and questioned her about the scope ofthe meeting. It became apparent that the men wanted tolearn about environment decoration and lighting conditionsthat would encourage prisoners being questioned to “coop-erate” with their inquisitors. The secretary assured the menthat the Congress did not deal with colour design and

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concentrated solely on the measurement of light sources andcolour. Was the secretary correct in directing the men awayfrom the conference? Should she have introduced them todesigners attending the meeting? Would a designer seekingto create a “cooperative” space be behaving ethically?

The ethic of colour also occurs in hospitals through thenecessity to reduce stress on medical staff. For example, bluesin cardiac wards hinder diagnosis of heart attacks in whichpatients’ lips turn bluish, yellows in maternity units hinderdiagnosis of jaundice, and in dermatology wards orangeshinder diagnosis of skin diseases, while visual colour cluttercan be misleading and even dangerous to patients and staff.3

A common example of ethical irregularity concerns the every-day experience of viewing price and product details in retailenvironments. Low colour contrast or small print price labels,health warnings, and nutritional details are accidentally or perhapsdeliberately displayed in stores. This appears to have been recog-nized as unethical because colour difference and legibility speci-fication may become a matter for legislation.4

Lighting is a factor in environmental design and no singlelighting regime is optimal for all foods. An ethical questionthat some regard as bordering on fraud concerns the displayof red meat. Red-biased light conceals the brown specks thatindicate pigment oxidation; the customer normally regardssuch meat containing metmyoglobin, although probably ed-ible, as undesirable.5 Is it unethical to display foods to theirbest possible advantage?

Dress

The colour and style of our dress indicates membership of agroup but on occasions it is used to make individuals or groupsof people look different. In most cultures, for example, thebride must look distinctive by perhaps wearing a specificallycoloured dress or headwear; she is made to appear differentfrom others at her wedding. In parts of medieval Europeprostitutes were obliged to wear specific colours, often yellow,as a mark of their profession. Colours are also used to associatethe wearer with a particular cause, such as a football club.Desecration, for example, by the burning of colours or flags,has become a powerful symbol identifying the burner with anattack on the organization or country.

Dress has been used to discriminate against specific indi-viduals or sections of the population. Since the 10th century indifferent countries Jews have been forced to wear race mark-ers. The Nazis, during World War II, used this mechanism foridentification; this later made it easier for the authorities torecognize those to be sent to extermination camps. Hence,clothing is used for identification and this may or may not havehad a sinister motive. Where does the beneficial use of colourin uniform or display stop and a sinister use start?

COLORANTS IN FOODS

For 4,000 years colorants have been added to foods fornumerous reasons. We feel better if the food we are eatingis the appropriate colour, for example, when eating mint-

flavored ice cream that is green. Colour helps us identify aflavor and estimate its strength and quality.

Colorants are added for manufacturing reasons. For ex-ample, colorants may be used to restore damage caused byprocessing, to make products more uniform or attractive, orto protect flavor- and light-sensitive vitamins during stor-age. It seems such arguments have become largely accept-able and possibly ethical to the consumer.

In the 19th century, however, colourful but poisonouscopper and lead salts were used to colour sweets. Use ofsuch poisons that can kill any of us is clearly unethical, andfortunately their use is not permitted. However, some coun-tries still allow the addition of azo dyes such as tartrazineand sunset yellow. These can induce hyperactivity andasthma in a minority of children.5 Clearly, it is unethical topoison the mass of those consuming metal salts; is it stillunethical to poison members of a small minority group?After all, even water is poisonous if we consume too much.

There are more subtle questions concerning food addi-tives. Nutritionists have spent many years attempting toeducate the public that fruit juices are a good source ofvitamin C. Fruit juices are traditionally marketed withascorbic acid (vitamin C), which, because it degrades an-thocyanins (fruit juice pigments), the manufacturer wouldlike to leave out. Is it professionally ethical to market fruitjuices as breakfast drinks when they contain little or noascorbic acid? Is it ethical for producers to go one stepfurther by fortifying fruit juices with riboflavin and thiamineand label them “fortified,” when the public has come toaccept the word as meaning fortified with vitamin C?

Another example concerns cake. Cakes contain eggs andthese are good for the human system in limited quantities.Yellow dye may be used in cakes to give the impression ofgreater egg yolk content. Is the producer (or designer de-picting a highly yellow cake on the packaging) behavingethically6?

The American press quotes many cases in which nonnaturalcolours are being used to tempt children to overeat foods thatcontribute to obesity when eaten to excess. Examples includehigh-fat margarine products that are purple and bubblegumflavored, or hot pink, or bright blue; high-fat, high-sugar ketch-ups that include bubblegum-flavored blue mayonnaise, and“Blastin’ Green” and “Funky Purple” ketchup; high-fat, high-salt snacks that include some that are neon orange; and high-sugar drinks that are marketed in colourful branded cans.7 Ismanufacture and presentation of such products ethical?

COLOUR IN MARKETING

Kids love colour, and this is used extensively in toy marketing.Sickly (some say delicate, feminine, pretty) Barbie pink hasbecome a firm favorite of little girls and is an established adultstyle branding tool. Kids are successfully exploited, sight of thepink induces expectations that lead to pester power, andthereby sales are increased. Such brand colours, includingthose of chocolate wrappers and the fast food logo, are nowpart of our ‘social DNA. ” Examples of offending productsinclude the citrus-scented bleach pack with the picture of a

88 COLOR research and application

sliced orange on the label and the apple-juice-coloured clean-ing fluid marketed in clear bottles.8

Rules of colour in food marketing were very simple: use darkcolours with sophisticated textures and design for adults and brighthigh-contrast saturated colours and horror figures for children. Thelatter are part of the individual child’s anthropological other world;kett, products that no self respecting adult would be seen eating.However, changes to this controlled order have taken place. Al-though there are many examples of beautiful nonbrash productdisplays and packs, marketing for adults has in the main becomean extension of marketing for children and high-contrast coloursare increasingly used to attract everyone. This occurred whencities such as downtown Hong Kong became a mass of brashneon signs fighting for the shoppers’ attention. The challenge ofmarketing with boldness of colour and design is now a conspic-uous part of the store. The intrusion of high-contrast bright colourscan be seen, for example, in the dairy, bakery, alcoholic drinks,and other sections.

Bright high-contrast colours tempting children and adultsnot only include the McDonald’s facade (69% of childrenunder 3 years old recognize the logo) but also are found inthe free strange toy figures given with children’s meals.Toys have been used in child-targeted marketing sincebefore World War I. Colourful cereal packs featuring cud-dly animals or icons of respectability (such as the UKclean-imaged sports personalities Gary Lineker and PaulaRadcliffe) tempt children and adults to eat products that in100 g contain, for example, four times the daily recom-mended sugar intake or twice the daily salt intake.

During 1 month in 2003, UK children’s programsscreened 721 commercials and, of these, 39% were forfoods. The three main television advertisers spent 53 mil-lion dollars in 2003 targeting children. Under this relentlessadvertising national dietary education efforts, such as theU.S. Food Guide Pyramid introduced in 1992, have col-lapsed. Did the colour practitioner play a role in this?

Among the findings of a recent review of the literature9

are the following:

● food promotion affects children’s food purchase behaviorand diet;

● food promotion affects what small children say they like;● the greater the exposure the lower the nutritional intake of

children; and● food nutrition advertising has no effect on a child’s con-

cept of a healthy diet.

As an aside, it is reported that children have tried to educateadults. In Troy, Michigan, they hacked into the wireless fre-quency used by a local Burger King drive-through intercom.The message given to overweight customers was that they aretoo fat for Whoppers and would be better off with a salad. Suchopportunities for children to fight back are few.10

The binge drinking and slamming among teens and twen-ties in the UK have, some have argued, resulted from theopen marketing of alcoholic lemonades or alcopops sold inbrightly coloured cartoon-covered bottles. Intense market-ing has forced formerly adult scenes (for example, thebeautiful packs used for some high-alcohol gin and vodkadrinks) into the receptive minds of the potential underagedrinker. Perhaps this is unethical of the producer (?), butdoes the designer also bear responsibility?

Hence, targeting children through the guise of marketingto adults is with us. There is now no natural dividing linedefined by the adult signal of sophisticated design anddarker colours for adults and brash for children. Brighthigh-contrast colours are used to market to all ages andyounger buyers are attracted by products specifically mar-keted for adults.

FINALE

Will anyone attempt to answer the questions posed above?If they do, it will have been worthwhile asking them. If thequestions are not answered, will this mean that we are allsatisfied and happy about the way we use colour to com-municate messages?

Some ethicists believe that individual responsibilities arestronger to those individuals close to us (say, to family orfellow members of a club) than to those more remote(perhaps such as buyers of our product or service). Can thisbe right11?

Another question is as follows: whose business is it to beconcerned with colour ethics?

JOHN HUTCHINGS

1. Hutchings JB. Colour and power and ethics. In: Nieves JL,Hernandez-AndresJ, editors. Proceedings of the 10th Congress of the Inter-national Colour Association, Granada, Spain, 2005, Part 1. p 417–420.

2. Hutchings JB. Expectations and the food industry—The impact ofcolor and appearance. New York: Kluwer/Plenum Press; 2003.

3. Camgoz N. Colour design in healthcare environments. In: Nieves JL, Her-nandez-Andres J, editors. Proceedings of the 10th Congress of the Interna-tional Colour Association; Granada, Spain, 2005, Part 1. p 151–154.

4. Nilsson T. Ensuring color legibility. In: Nieves JL, Hernandez-AndresJ, editors. Proceedings of the 10th Congress of the International ColourAssociation, Granada, Spain, 2005, Part 1. p 749–752.

5. Dipalma JR. Tartrazine sensitivity. Am Fam Physician 1990;42:1347–1350.

6. Hutchings JB. Food color and appearance, 2nd ed, Gaithersburg, MD:Aspen; 1999.

7. Marder D. Playing with their food. Philadelphia Inquirer, 2 January 2002.8. Color Matters Newsletter, July 2004.9. Food Standards Agency report. Review of research on the effects of

food promotion to children, prepared by the University of Strath-clyde’s Centre for Social Marketing, 22 September 2003.

10. The Independent, 12 January 2004.11. Brook G. Does obligation diminish with distance? Ethics Place Envi-

ron 2005;8:3–20.

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