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The Politics of Color Selection

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I heard about a tragedy the other day. A designer lost a tour based solely on color selection. A particular band that chooses a different color for each album cover hired this person to do their tour. During a televised promotion for their upcoming tour, the production manager mentioned to the designer/programmer that they would like the color of their album to be in every single song. The designer chose to go against the band’s wishes.

Instead of incorporating white into every song, this individual made the unfortunate decision of choosing pink and green. The designer was not asked back for the tour. The band could never tell the designer that they were fired over something as simple as a color preference, but that’s what happened. They found someone new who could more acceptingly follow their suggestions and paid handsomely for it. Reading this entire article will help you avoid the same fate.

The Basic Scheme

Color selection is possibly the only thing that performers and select clients notice about lighting. When they are onstage, performers rarely turn around to see shadows, highlights or even video content. They can see the blinding spotlight and the color of the ambient light around them. If your lead singer feels like his song needs to be red, your job is to make it red. If your artist says “NO Magenta”, that means just that, no magenta. You should accept the limitation as a way to advance your artistic prowess.

I recently had the pleasure of re-programming a show for a client who was very clear that they did not want fuchsia at any point during the show. I inherited the show from another programmer, so I went back through the cues and changed anything that resembled fuchsia to something else. The only time that I had to get creative was this one cue that was a twenty-second fade from blue to red with the upstage LED cyc lights. The entire cyc went fuchsia (magenta) for five seconds. The solution was to delay the color timing of the cross fade. Instead of having the entire cyc change from blue to red over twenty seconds, I put a 1.2 second delay on each individual cell across the cue. This way, each cell went from blue to red in one second but the entire cyc took twenty seconds to get from blue to red. Fuchsia was avoided and I kept my gig.

Corporate Artistry

As an artist, if my client asks me to light a cow purple, I will search my soul to find the most artistic way of presenting a purple cow. I would never consider bringing a green llama to the table. To put it simply, the client needs to receive what they asked for. No one wants to pay for something they don’t want. I have been on corporate events where they are specific enough to bring me the exact RGB values of their corporate color. When I am lucky enough to receive such definite information, I use it. If production does not have the forethought to provide such information, it is increasingly simple to Google the company logo and figure out what color schematic will dominate my evening.

Corporations spend countless resources choosing their colors. They research how each color affects the human brain and how it will benefit their corporate brand. This research is based on years of instinctual training and complex associations. Colors trigger distinct emotions in our psyche. Companies research how responsive their target audience reacts to their specific color on both a conscious and subconscious level. As designers and programmers, we need to harness the power of color psychology to put our clients in the best light.

Primary Colors

Every color, including black and white, has implications. As a designer, you need to pick colors carefully to enhance specific elements of your performance. You can use shade and tones to enhance the nuances, but color selection is the primary focus. When you are given the freedom to choose your own colors, please allow me to make a few suggestions:

  • Red represents passion, energy, danger or aggression, warmth and heat.
  • Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics.
  • Yellow is a strange color: it is often associated with happiness, but also activates the anxiety center of the brain.
  • Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Dark green is also commonly associated with money. Green is not a front light. Unless you are lighting Frankenstein, don’t use green from the front.
  • Blue is subdued and works great in between songs.
  • Pink/Magenta can be fun and flirty, but its feminine associations means it is far too often avoided.
  • Blue for slow songs, Red for fast. It’s a tried and true way of expressing the emotion of most songs. It’s not a rule, but it’s a very good suggestion.
  • A Red and Green Combo is for Christmas. (Almost exclusively.) Unless you are lighting the Rockettes’ Christmas Spectacular, don’t use green and red together. Red and green do not belong in Billy Idols’ “Eyes Without a Face”.
  • A Magenta and Green Combo can be used in one song. No more. Magenta and green is a bold statement. Please use this combo sparingly.
  • When programming the song, “Purple Rain” please use the best purple you can mix. Just do it.
  • Keep your color schemes to two colors and white. (Jam bands are exempt) Keeping your looks duo-chromatic is easier on the eyes and evokes a stronger emotional response.
  • For Rock ‘n’ Roll, use a warm, pale front light. A color temperature of 3K to 4K accentuates flesh tones nicely. Feel free to vary from the warms for a few dramatic looks.
  • The color of the lights should complement the color of the video content.

Rainbow Chases

Ever since Wholehog II, we all have the ability to throw our entire rig into a multi-color frenzy. We can create rainbows that will mystify even the wisest leprechaun. Every Telemundo LD used one in every song they programmed. Some LDs frown upon the rainbow chase because they are trite and overused; others celebrate them for their visual impact. Every time I consider putting a rainbow chase into my shows, I think about what Butch Allen of Blame Funnel Creative, Inc. told me, “LDs hate them, but audiences love them”. That’s why you should only use them when the song absolutely begs for it. For a more in depth look at the pros and cons on the ROYGBIV situation, please read Brad Schillers’ article entitled “End of the Rainbow” (PLSN, Dec. 2015, “Feeding the Machines,” page 49).

If your client wants a blue cow that quacks like a duck and jumps like a kangaroo, you need to do everything logistically possible to make sure that CowDuckaroo is blue. Don’t let your artistic vision get in the way of a paycheck.

Chris Lose is a touring LD who thinks that CowDuckaroos should be red, but he will make it blue for the right price.