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What Color is Your Speech?
We humans are powerfully influenced by color. There are of course the associations we develop with specific colors, thanks to our culture. Red can mean good fortune, or something hazardous. White can be the color of death, or purity. And then there are moments that depend on color, like the emotional charge we get from a blue sky (without a cloud) or a spectacular sunset — of oranges, reds, and gold, gradually turning into blue, then indigo, and then finally black. By the time we are adults, we humans have a rich set of symbolic meanings that we attach to various colors. Green may be the color of money, or the environment. And so on.
Given that color is so important to us, it’s surprising that we don’t spend more time thinking about what colors we connect with our speeches.
What’s your thought leadership color palette, and how does it show up in your speeches?
If we do think about this issue, it’s mostly a design challenge for our slides, or our speaker website, or, if we’re really firing on all speaking cylinders, our overall look, the design palette we use to express our brand in all the various ways it shows up.
And yet, colors have an effect on our psyches, and given that audiences are looking to speakers to provide a top-notch experience for them, it might…
