Target Audience
Identifying a target audience is vitally important to determine that basis of content on a web page. A target audience might be children 2-10 and parents, in the case of DisneyJunior. A broad target audience might be United States Veterans of all ages and genders as in the case of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Target audiences can be extremely specific as in the case of Olay as they are marketing to the demographic of women 15-40, with their anti-aging products and beauty skin care lines. My target audience is the governing body for acceptance into the Penn State Graduate Program, and to capture the attention of potential future employers.Color Pallet and Sociological Responce
Personally the color of deep ocean water before a storm is one of my all time favorite colors. It is impossible to capture in photographs and hard to describe without first hand experience. The color is a deep royal blue with this rich gray hue to it and my recollection of it always manifests with thoughts of all the other mariners that have seen those waters and kept their course knowing that trouble could be over the next wave. It speaks depths to me about character, fortitude, and heritage.However, without an understanding of how people are emotionally connected to colors using my favorite color could be damaging to the traffic on my site. Because human thought is not simple nor linear, there are many aspects to social engineering and sociology that have to be taken into account when designing a multimedia product. The first connection to emotion and color that needs to be discussed is how culture in a whole may view a color. For example, in his autobiography Chuck Yeager tells a story about being stationed in Pakistan and working to help with issues regarding reducing STD’s in the area. He attempted to address the issue by trying to give out condoms to the local population. All of the condoms were white, to some this is no big deal, however to the Muslims and other Pakistanis in the area, white is the color of purity. To use a white condom during pre-marital sex is a social taboo. To remedy this issue Yeager and his wife got colored condoms shipped in country and the local population began using them. Listed below is a chart of common colors and their associations taken from aboutsociology.com
Another interesting part to
color is that not only do cultures see representations of color meanings
differently but they also have a different perspective on color completely.
“…cultures have different terms for colors, and may also assign some color names to slightly different parts of the spectrum, or have a different color ontology: for instance, the Japanese color aoi can be interpreted as meaning something between the Western color terms of "blue" and "green": green is regarded as a shade of aoi. more…”
With all of this in mind we
are able to take a good look at what we should actually do with color in our
websites. Fortunately, there is a good accepted practice that applies to a lot of
things in life: everything in moderation. Ways that I could incorporate my favorite color in my site could include within my logo, in the font of my pages, or as an accent to some part of the interface. In reality, the possibilities are endless as long as you are consistent and subtle with
your color pallet.
