Colour can affect us in different ways. But only if we see it.
There's a glut of research showing how colours can influence how we think and feel.
One of the most significant studies was conducted by US scientist Robert Gerard in 1958. Gerard showed how red, blue and white light affects our brains: red can make us anxious, while blue often makes us calm. He also found that colours had an effect on our appetite and blood pressure, among other things.
But you don't have to sit in a lab filled with LED screens that constantly change colour to understand the impact this can have on your brain patterns.
It's important to see colours in all things so you can take inspiration from the world around you. To see beyond the grey walls and neutral colours that we're often surrounded by within our offices (or spare rooms).
Some people mock the quirky colourful nature of creative spaces within a certain kind of office. But the bright murals and other decorations in many creative companies are there for a reason: To stimulate the senses of those working there, and help them come up with new ideas.
I truly believe you can use colour to give you ideas, wherever you are. But you need to work a bit to see colour and obverse it properly.
Try to view objects as a 'colour', rather than the shape or form that they happen to take.
This may sound a bit artsy-fartsy, but bear with me.
Look at an object. Focus on its colour. Focus on the shade and the tone of colour that helps to create its form. Look at how the light hits the surface; how the different shades of light create new colours on different parts of the object. Is there more than one colour? Do the colours change, depending on how you look at the object?
Write down how all these colours make you feel - what they remind you of. Do you love or hate them?
If there's a main colour, what does that colour 'smell' like?
What other senses does it provoke?
What other things do you associate with that colour?
Another way to bring colour to your world is to play with your phone screen colour settings. Most of our day is spent staring at our devices, so we might as well use them to stimulate some ideas. There are also many free apps that allow you to experiment with this.
I'll get a bit more into Colour Therapy and what colours mean on another blog. But for now, try to start observing objects more in terms of the colours they're made of.
Before long, you'll be seeing colours everywhere. Without a science lab, LED screen (or LSD tab) in sight.
Want more? Check out tomorrow's FFWDtv - it's very colourful!