Well, That's Comforting...

Color Matters.... One of the best sources for my project that I have used a lot... Is apparently an attack site? At least, it is according to Mozilla. Regular internet explorer just tells me

"We're sorry. The Color Matters website is not available at this time.

Please check back June 5."

What do I do about this? I was just about to put this site in my webliography section of my website?

Why...

I've looked at so many different things when it comes to my graduation project. I've put so much work into researching and writing that paper...

I've looked at how colors affect emotions, how people use colors to convey emotions or describe them, I've looked at daycares and marketing... I've looked at how changing the colors of things affect us or our opinion of the object being changed...

Did I do all of this for nothing?

My project seems to have become how color affects us in general... Then what do I do?

I feel so lost. I've been trying to talk to teachers via e-mail so that I don't have to track them down and interrupt them, but they aren't responding. I need more than just a simple 5 minute conversation... I need 10-20 minutes of talking about things before I fall apart....

I'm going to fail....

Lost and Confused.

I'm doomed. Everything needs to be done by Friday (tomorrow). I don't even know what direction my action plan is speeding to anymore. I don't know where anything is going...

I've been pretty much told that everything I'm doing is wrong, so I don't know what to do with my paper or action plan.

I'm not sure if I'm going to make it...

Daycare

Alright, so this post will be a lot like my post about advertising, except it will obviously be about daycare centers. Mrs. Savido suggested I take a look into daycare centers and what not around here, so I decided to do a tiny bit of web searching too.

This was one of the best pictures I can find. Not only is it brightly colored, but it may help teach kids patterns of colors. Also, the use of green suggests that these kids might be a bit calmer than usual (they sure look it in this picture too!). The yellow tables in the background suggest that they have more... wild? play areas.

Now for some of the worst daycare pictures I have found. This one wasn't too, too bad... But it is pretty bad if you ask me... It's peachy color makes me sick, and it doesn't seem to match at all. The white wall is pretty random, but they might have been going for a calmer area? I'm liking the blues and yellows, that seems calm yet excitable to me. It makes a nice balance. I'm still stuck on the horribleness of that peach color though....


Now, here is the absolute worse daycare I have ever seen. It's like they weren't even trying. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't think that this daycare in any way inspires creativity and fun learning. It looks like an office building. It's plain, it's boring, and it's.... Too wide open too.


I would suggest brighter tables, a different carpet (not the blue rug though, I love the blue rug). I mean, those random tents and leaf things are really cool, I think the place needs more of that. Kids need to be excited about learning and interacting with other kids if you ask me....

That's all on that for now I guess....

Bouncing Back to Something Again....

Color Therapy. Something that I have looked at a lot during my study of colors. I've never been sure if it was significant (or true enough) to actually look into. I suppose it is relevant though (at least a bit) and I need more information to shove into my paper.

I also don't know if I'm supposed to change the entire focus of my paper or what.... If I am, I don't think I am. I think it properly reflects the research I have done when it comes to colors. Maybe I just need more about the emotion aspect of it? I'm not sure. Maybe it should just be how color affects us in general?

Anyways, I should get back to my original point of this post.

Color Therapy. Load of crap, or worth saying SOMETHING about?

In ancient Egyptian mythology, healing with color was discovered by a god by the name of Troth (Which is the equivalent to Hermes). Color healing was a thing of magick ... Anyways, they used certain colored stones (and powders, creams, and whatever else can be colored I guess) and also colored certain healing/treatment places certain colors.

This information (that I kinda sorta summarized) can be found here : http://www.spiritual.com.au/articles/healing/color-therapy-1hgraham.htm

I don't feel like summarizing the whole thing just for myself (I know no one really reads this, so there would be no point in me asking my imaginary readers if the information is really relevant...)

Interesting Advertising

I decided to test out a few advertising strategies.

Blue (light blue) is supposed to be a really good color for advertising milk.
What about yellow though?
Now, I didn't really look into how yellow may affect the situation, but yellow can be seen as a sickly color. In this case, I thought of puss.

A similar switch that I had done involved frozen foods



Now, what is the # 1 color you want to avoid if you are advertising for meat?

Of course! Using green to advertise meat would suggest mold.
My last experiment with advertising stems back to my old small business class. Here is a poster I designed to advertise my business

And here is the same poster in a few other colors...



The last poster was a more recent edit. I used black because I have read that men prefer darker colors. (Also, the last pizza poster remings me of the Steelers, which might also attract business)

So, which advertisements here do you think would sell better? (Any of the ads presented here in this post today)

P.S.-- Here is the link that inspired this post
http://belikeliquid.com/blog/marketing-blog/the-effects-of-color-in-marketing/

Turned all the way around again

Well, I have to re-write my entire paper. I am entirely turned around yet again. I really should have had grad project last trimester. I can't think syraight right now, my eyes are burning, I can't breathe, I basically feel like crap.... And I'm supposed to comprehend all of the things I need to do for my paper.

Paper Progress

I turned my paper in for teacher edits. I think I gave it to the teacher that would edit it the harshest, so I'm hoping I don't go too crazy with trying to fix all of the edits and make it perfect. I got an e-mail back from the children's museum, I'm going to e-mail her back in a minute here. Right now I'm just feeling really sick.

Also, I have to look into the professor guy....

Alright Then,

Finally, self revisions of my paper are complete. Now I just need to start sorting through the other pile of things I need to do.

A special thanks to Ms. Anderson, for sending me a plethora of links relating to my grad project.

That also leads me to a concern... There are so many things I can do with this project, and so many things that can affect anything I choose to do with this project. I hope I'm not biting off more than I can chew, I can't afford to this last trimester.

Outline so Far...

How Colors Affect Emotions

I. Intro. .

A. Studies
B. Science projects

II. What colors do what?

A. . Explain what the sources I used said about the different colors
1. . Warm colors= comfort and warmth-anger and hostility (Cherry)
2. .Cool colors= calm, yet sad or indifferent (Cherry)
3. . (Johnson)
4. . (Mood chart)
5. . (color and mood)
6. . (Franco)
7. . (Color wheel)
8. . (Mood ring)

III. Why do colors affect emotions?

A. . Past experience
1. . “Regardless of what your left brain may tell you, color symbolizes and triggers emotions, memories and ideas or thoughts without you even realizing it.” (understanding)
2. . Daffodils inspiring hope (ACS)

B. . Gender?
1. . “Thomas, Curtis, and Bolton (1978)”—72 Nepalese people interviewed, women listed more color names than men (Khouw)
2. More girls liking purple than guys (Hallock)
3. “Purple stands out as a feminine color because it is chosen almost exclusively by women as a favorite color and is strongly disliked by men. Traditionally associated with royalty,the color purple is also spirtual, romantic, and mysterious” (Bear).
4. . Men prefer orange to yellow, girls are opposite (Khouw)
5. . This is changing [manly men wearing girly colors in sports] (color by numbers)

C. Other Factors
1. . . “Birren states, ‘With maturity comes a greater liking for hues of shorter wave length (blue, green, purple) than for hues of longer wave length (red, orange, and yellow).’” (Hallock)
2. Old people can’t see dark colors well (color by number)

a. . people are effected more by the combination of hue, value, chroma, warmness or coolness (Khouw)
b. .
c. .

IV. How can colors affect learning environments?

A. . (Willard)
1. Pink locker room = less aggression (Nolan)

V. What other things can colors improve? ((Work in progress))

A. . The workplace
1. .
2. .
3. .
B. . Homes
1. .
2. .
3. .
C. . Business
1. . Websites
2. . blue=business like [websites] but cold on its own (Nolan)
3. . margarine color marketing (color by numbers)
D. Therapy? (questionable)
1. . Increase blood circulation(Cherry)
2. .Red, Anemia and blood conditions (Stefanidakis)
3. .Yellow= Stomach, liver, intestines, skin healing (Stefanidakis)
4. . Indigo = skin problems (Cherry)
5. .Indigo = blood problems (Stefanidakis)
VI.
VII. Conclusion

Not Making it....

Well, I'm s till really, really, really behind on my paper. I'm writing this so I can take a breather and possibly organize some thought. (Or perhaps I'm writing just to rant a bit...)

Right now, I'm still only on two pages of the actual paper being written. I've been trying to build my outline up a bit more before returning to the paper. It's horrible. I'm having problems finding things related to my foundation questions. I based my foundation questions on what I wanted to learn through my experiment (that I won't fully be able to test do to time)... I did not create questions that could easily be researched. Every source either gives me irrelevant information, contradicts most of my other information, or gives me a HUGE run around.

It seems I'm the only one with this problem though, mostly everyone else is done.
No word back from the Children's Museum either.

I don't think I'm going to pass this year....

Shift in Direction Again.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/color/

Mr. Hamilton suggested I look into this guy.
He also suggested somehow doing an experiment without people being aware of me doing one.
I had a lot more to say here, but I have a lot more to do elsewhere. I'm swamped at the moment.

What I'm up to::
- Fixing up Literary review
- Thinking about website
- Taking more notes
- Looking into this guy ( Eric Rubenstein )
- Thinking about action plan
- Waiting for reply from Children's Museum
- Trying not to lose my mind
- Trying not to fail

Made The Call

I finally called the Children's museum (well, the assistant manager). She was really nice about all of it. I feel like I may have seemed impolite though, I sort of rushed through what I had written down to say (and I actually didn't get to the other questions I was going to get to)

Anyways, she's going to e-mail me sometime next week after she gets in touch with the people that do the program to see if they would be ok with it.

Frustration

So, I'm no where near done with my paper. Why? Well, I'm sure I could give you a bunch of reasons, but you will only see them as excuses.

Mainly though, I'm not happy with the way it's turning out. It sounds elementary and it basically just sucks. the more I look at it and try to write it, my headache gets bigger.

Literary Review and Web Site

My web site is coming along fantastically. Most of my pages are all linked to each other, and every page has a link to this blog. It's very colorful, and works along with my project. I'm hoping it won't give people a headache though, or confuse them...

My paper on the other hand, that's slow progress. It probably doesn't help that I am trying my creative writing class's "crappy" first draft method. My very first draft is probably going to sound very elementary. My goal is to get all of the facts down, and tweak the working later. I'm afraid that I might be judged because of that though.

Here is my introduction though

Everything has color. Color is in the eyes of adults and young children alike. At their young age, children already begin to create their own opinion of a color, and associate that color to other things. Most children will be taught things like, blue is used to represent sadness, red represents anger, and other similar color emotion associations. The question is then, if a color can be associated with feeling an emotion, can seeing that color affect the way that you feel? If the walls around you are green, does it make any difference on your emotions? Colors can affect our nervous systems, (more specifically the pituitary gland, which relates to hormones) therefore altering the way we feel, work, learn, or think.

This might also change. Although I know that it is hormones and what not, it has a lot to do with past experiences and color association. I might also change the order of my outline.

The outline goes from the introduction, to brief facts about what colors are said to do what, to the why all of those are different depending on the source.

It's confusing. It's also really hard to distance myself from the topic and just state the facts...