The Most Recognized Palette Of All

There’s always plenty of talk about colour here at the Red Rocket studios. This is especially true as we are decorating our homes and preparing for the arrival of the holiday season — a time when we can all get closer to family and friends to share in a little holiday cheer.

For many, this time of year is very evocative of Christmases past, of family traditions, the sights, sounds and the smells of home cooking, parties and great expectations. It’s a happy time of year as we take a break from the daily grind and immerse ourselves in traditions to push back the cold and help us cozy up to the hearth. When we decorate for Christmas, colour helps us get in the mood, and it’s the most recognized of all complementary colour palettes —green and red — that is used to signal the Christmas season.

Green and red are opposites on the colour wheel and provide an interesting combination of warm and cool tones: the fire (red), and the Christmas tree (green). These colours evoke a sense of Christmastime, which makes it difficult to use this palette for any other application as the connection to Christmas is so strong. The question is, where and when did this colour palette come from and why is it so “Christmas-y?”

Well, the answer is that we can thank the advertising industry again for one of our cultural icons, Santa Claus. The history of Santa is long and convoluted, but it was in the early 1930s when Coca Cola came out with a series of full colour ads that appeared during the holiday season in 1931. A new portrayal of Santa by Swedish American artist Haddon Sundblom as a jolly fellow with a big white beard, rosy cheeks and a red and white suit (drinking a Coke, of course) graced the pages of the Saturday Evening Post, the Ladies Home Journal and National Geographic. The primary colour in these illustrations is Santa’s big red suit, and in all of the ads, there is wide use of a forest green to complement the red. And as Sundblom’s Santa became the standard for all Santas past and present, the colour palette stuck, and it’s ingrained into our holiday season culture some 80 years later.


 

The fact is that the best artists and designers (including Sundblom) are very purposeful when it comes to the use of colour. When used right they communicate a sense of harmony and balance, exactly the message of Christmastime. So, the well-executed and friendly illustration direction combined with the harmonious colour treatment evokes positive feelings of home, of giving and of trust. And this is how an illustrator from back in the 1930s established a strong visual direction for a cultural icon, like Santa, and provided a lasting cultural colour palette that would serve to evoke a sense of harmony and good will for years to come.

Today, colour continues to evoke a strong connection to the past and provides harmony (or dissonance) as is required. However, these days, Christmas is no longer solely “green and red.” There are new and innovative colour palette options that work well at Christmas. Some of these include silvers, blues combined with bright and energetic palettes. For a look at some of the modern-day Christmas tree colours, click on the following link.