Brown

Brown is made up a mixture of orange, red, rose, or yellow with black or gray. It evokes a sense of stability, reliability, strength, and approachability. It can also create negative feelings, such as sadness and isolation. The mind often sees it as a color that brings warmth, comfort, and security. It is often described by many as the down-to-earth and conventional color. It is often associated with the earth and all things that are natural or organic.

I actually asked people the first thing that comes to mind when they they think of the color brown. Some of these answers associated with food. Brown is often associated to chocolate and brownies. It is also interesting to note that brown is often the color of the food people recognize as appetizing. This is because that not only is it the color of chocolate, but it is also the color that cooked food often turns into. An example would be red meat that is cooked and turns brown or dough turning into brown bread, hence the cooking term "browning".

Another response I got from asking people was that the color also reminds them of boxes. This response is probably associated with packages that often come in brown boxes. UPS is a brand that associates itself with the color brown and is usually associated with brown boxes, and because of this the color brown enhances their service by visually providing potential customers direction towards a service they need.

Brown can also be associated with dying leaves. In India, brown is a color of mourning because it is the color of dead leaves. The Japanese language has no word for the color brown, so it is often described using other words, like the color of tea or a the fur of a fox. In the United States, brown is associated with Thanksgiving holiday along with orange, since this holiday takes place in the autumn.

As mentioned before, brown is associated with the dying leaves and this is the reason why brown is associated with autumn. Dead leaves eventually cover the land, and the once green scenery of spring turns orange and brown due to the dead or dying leaves. The colors cover both the ground and the air as the dead brown leaves fly through the ground and land into piles of other dead leaves.

Brown is also a great color to use in designing any type of visual art. It is able to compliment many colors since it often blends well behind them. An example would be the image of a beautiful garden. The garden can contain flower stems of green and petals of red, yellow, white, etc. and the brown soil beneath them will never look out of place.

Many ethnic groups are often identified with the color brown. This is due to the brown skin color of these ethnic groups. Examples of brown people would those that live in Southeast Asia or Mexico.

Brown is mostly associated with nature, so one of the ideas I thought about would be to make a website that has information about soil. I could talk about the layers of soil hidden beneath the Earth, the uses of soil, living organisms within the soil. I would explain the layers of soil using an illustration that points out the several layers of soil and what could be found in each layer. This information can be carried over to another part of the website which identifies and describes organisms living within each layer of soil. I could even go far as to say that the organisms living above all the layers of soil still depend on it, which could carry over to the part of the website that identifies and describes the uses of soil.