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Dec. 12th, 2006 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
treehatThis is pretty amazing: it seems that just about every fast food place and convenience store use red and yellow in their logos. This article suggests that it's a form of species mimicry, and discusses mimicry in nature of the poisonous Plain Tiger Butterfly.
One thing I find particularly interesting about this is the fact that none of them really use orange. A couple of those pictured, Hardee's and Pizza Hut (and perhaps McDonald's) have slightly darker yellows, but none of them really have a nice, bright orange. This is odd, especially now, since orange has become very big recently (at least with graphic designers), probably due to its standoutiveness. I'm guessing that the contrast between the two strong colors - dark red and bright yellow - grab attention much better outside, on large-scale advertisements than orange does in print.
Also, I don't think it's really mimicry that says "come eat me!" as the article suggests. More likely, it's just really bright and noticeable. Though I suppose there's other roadside places without that scheme, such as gas stations and supermarkets - though gas stations will generally have red OR yellow, paired with some other color like blue or green (the exception is Shell, which uses red and yellow). There must be something hard-wired in the brain about those colors, for them to be used so often.
Y'know, this would be a really interesting thing to research. Maybe I'll look into it over break. This sort of thing is fascinating to me - too bad I'm not cut out for a graphic design job.
One thing I find particularly interesting about this is the fact that none of them really use orange. A couple of those pictured, Hardee's and Pizza Hut (and perhaps McDonald's) have slightly darker yellows, but none of them really have a nice, bright orange. This is odd, especially now, since orange has become very big recently (at least with graphic designers), probably due to its standoutiveness. I'm guessing that the contrast between the two strong colors - dark red and bright yellow - grab attention much better outside, on large-scale advertisements than orange does in print.
Also, I don't think it's really mimicry that says "come eat me!" as the article suggests. More likely, it's just really bright and noticeable. Though I suppose there's other roadside places without that scheme, such as gas stations and supermarkets - though gas stations will generally have red OR yellow, paired with some other color like blue or green (the exception is Shell, which uses red and yellow). There must be something hard-wired in the brain about those colors, for them to be used so often.
Y'know, this would be a really interesting thing to research. Maybe I'll look into it over break. This sort of thing is fascinating to me - too bad I'm not cut out for a graphic design job.
