The Color of Sludge

Picking just the right color for a job can be one of a graphic designer’s biggest challenges. The wrong color or shade can tank a project. Blue can be trustworthy or dull. Red? Is it energetic or aggressive? Green can be fresh and environmentally friendly, or it can remind consumers of bread mold. (Years ago, I worked on a bread packaging redesign project and one of the “senior” art directors had chosen a lovely, muted color-coding scheme that included—as I pointed out—a color that was the exact shade of bread mold. Yuck.)

But, what if the right color for the job is actually the wrong color? What if you are not trying to drive sales, but drive sales down? It happens. As this article from CNN.com reports, when lawmakers in the UK wanted to discourage tobacco sales, they chose a unique approach: redesigning the packaging substituting any brightly colored branding with a color that looks a lot like sludge.

The official color, Pantone 448C, is what designers would call a warm grey. I personally like warm greys and don’t have any issues with 448C, but it would seem it is a color that smokers find objectionable at least on tobacco packaging. Maybe it is the color they picture their lungs becoming after smoking too much. Or maybe it just reminds them of sludge. Either way, less smoking is a good thing even if we have to sacrifice a perfectly good warm grey in the process.