Cyan

Color in the built environment around us sometimes goes unseen   With rich luminescent high definition screens at every turn we can't ignore the visual  impact technological devices  have on our daily lives. Thinking about screen color in our environment sends us straight to a ubiquitous culprit. Swiping on the nearest smart phone causes  fields of green and blue icons to appear. 

What if we thought of these screens as an environment? Not a space for our bodies to hang out but somewhere our eyes and minds spent a lot of time, especially on social network sites. There are 16 million possible colors on the web. And while lots of different colors are used around the web, our social environments, the coffee shops of the internet, seem to be self selecting a cooling cyan. 

This infographic from Infochimps  tells an interesting tale of cyan on Twitter. The length of the dripping colors show hows many twitter profile background pictures primarily use that hue. The graphic shows that over half of the users on this social site chose a cyan themed background. 

But why are we choosing  cyan?  If we research color psychology, turquoise, a cousin of cyan, is   defined as a hue to help with focus and concentration. Cyan can enhance clear thinking  and support one in making  well thought out decisions. Maybe in a sea of constant chatter we are crowd sourcing a color that calms the storm and recharges our waning energy. Color psychology also claims that cyan and turquoise can make people more emotionally aloof. 

Or is Twitter's corporate color the big influence? Could the twitter fail whale  be communicating subliminal messages? 

We hope you will start noticing the palettes in social networking and consider how they influence your psyche.

- Emily Eifler, Writer, Colour Studio

- Jill Pilaroscia, Principal, Colour Studio