Colour as a tool of provocation.

“Look Me in the Eyes and Tell Me Honestly:
Who is your friend? Who is your enemy?
You have no friends among capitalists.
You have no enemies among the workers.
Only in a union of the workers of all nations will you be victorious over capitalism and liberated from exploitation.
Down with national antagonisms!
Workers of the world unite!”



In many classes at this school, I have found myself, as i'm sure many if not every other student in first year have also found themselves, questioning the nature of the human reaction to colour. As designers, colour and the corresponding collective reaction to it is paramount in our creation, seeing as our creations are more purpose bound than self expression pieces.

I find a great example of this form of colour utilization is to be found in propaganda, namely that of the Soviet Union. Marxism at it's core rejects vanity and religion, among other things, and therefore in states like China and Soviet-era Russia, the government takes it upon themselves to capitalize on the absence of those elements from people's lives by readily and visibly placing figures and symbols of the state and government in the people's mindset. The most popular method that Soviet propaganda departments would use to incite the feeling of the state's hand, would be to employ overpowering amounts of red, in high contrast and in the focal point of their images. Red is a colour with many emotional interpretations, however during the cold war red was the undeniable symbol of Soviet and communist ideals, and thus propaganda would employ it to incite the feeling of the Soviet Union's power, making the viewer uneasy, or even in fear of the subject matter, Russian or no.

A masterful use of colour can be found in the top poster, a poster literally and figuratively inciting the viewer to look into the eyes of Lenin. The employment of yellow in the composition essentially leaves the viewer uneasy and unwilling to do as the words command, words that demand that you reflect on any wrongdoings to the state and reminding you you should feel very bad about betraying your friends if you did (as if ten years in a hard labour camp wouldn't do that well enough). You look into the eyes of this yellow giant, and you are very aware of his power, you know he's looking for something and you can tell that there are bad things coming if he does indeed find it, and the colour and tone have illustrated that horrifyingly well.