How Colors Are Used in Cultures Around the World

Color has the power to evoke a kaleidoscope of different emotions and concepts. The message or symbolism conveyed by a color often varies across cultures, although some are almost universally believed to encompass a certain idea or feeling. For example, red is often associated with passion and black is the epitome of evil or grief. However, there can be vastly different interpretations of color around the world, which is just so intriguing to me! The founder of Information is Beautiful, David McCandless, has created this beautiful circular design called “Colours in Culture”, which showcases how colors are linked to different concepts and sentiments across cultures.

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What an absolutely compelling yet simple way to visualize this information! What cultural color “conundrums” stand out to you? There are a few concepts that have a wide range of colors, such as love. According to this, love is represented by red in Western, Japanese, and Asian culture, green in Hindu culture, yellow in Native American culture, and blue in African culture. What color do you associate love with the most? Death is another intriguing one. It is associated with black in Western, Japanese, and Native American culture, and white in Hindu and Chinese cultures. In Arab culture, death is silver, but here is the real curiosity – South Americans associate death with green! I looked into it further and found that while that is true for many Latin countries, green is the national color of Mexico and considered patriotic, so it is important to do further investigation before flexing your cultural color wheel knowledge!

All in all, I am in love with this idea for a visualization and the execution is stunning! One tiny critique would be to have the lines continue all around because I did struggle a bit with lining up the color blocks to the cultures.