| During the colour perception process, an associated feeling or emotion is induced in our brains, and this kind of emotion is termed 'colour emotion'. The aims of this study were to investigate the colour emotions of human beings, evaluate the influence of the physical specifications of colour on colour emotions and quantify the colour emotions with the standard colour specifications. Twelve opponent-word pairs were used to express certain emotions semantically. Due to the psychological nature, subjects of different cultural backgrounds are considered as influential factors of colour emotions, and, therefore, only the Hong Kong Chinese were invited to be the subjects in the visual assessments and mathematical models were derived for quantifying their colour emotions. With the establishment of these models, the designers can select colours for their products according to the evoked emotions and the communication between the designers and the colourists can be much improved by using numerical values. From the analysis, it was found that the influence of hue of colour on the colour emotion pairs used in this study was not so significant in general, whereas the influence of chroma was found to be the dominant parameter affecting 'warm-cool', 'vivid-sombre', 'gaudy-plain', 'striking-subdued', and 'dynamic-passive' colour emotions. Lightness of colour was found to be the dominant parameter affecting 'deep-pale', 'heavy-light', 'soft-hard', and 'strong-weak' colour emotions, whereas 'light-dark', 'transparent-turbid', and 'distinct-vague' colour emotions were found to be influenced by both lightness and chroma of colour.;In this study, the influences of gender and cultural effects, including subjects of Japanese, Thai, British and Hong Kong Chinese, on colour emotions were also analysed. Moreover, the experimental effects of using 2-point and 7-point visual assessment methods on colour emotion were compared, and the differences between the colour emotions of general customers and designers were evaluated.;Colour planners were derived for representing the quantitative correlation of colour emotions and standard colour specifications. A visualization of colours in the colour planner was achieved by establishing a computerized colour emotion display system which provides a means for the designers or colour users to select colours of the desired colour emotions from the monitor. |
