Color is a non-universal communication tool. And then, we have to make an extra effort.

Department of Human Science, Faculty of Design
Professor SUNAGA Shoji

The world that we perceive is very colorful. In everyday life, we use various color names in communication, for example, “please take the red ballpoint pen." It is necessary for us to have a common recognition about red in order to establish this communication However, all people do not have the common recognition about colors. This is because there is diversity in human color vision. The typical example is a color vision type called color deficiency. Therefore, because color is a non-universal communication tool, we have to make an extra effort for communication with colors and/or color names.

In our laboratory, we are working on themes related to the color design from a viewpoint of the diversity of color vision. In other words, we try to solve a problem about color in the society as a study theme, and we apply the knowledge of the color science to a color design.

In the recent study about color design, we developed the new color universal design method based on the viewpoint of the color deficiency called dichromacy. The first design work was a Kyushu University campus guide map renewal plan. It received a prize and a Kyushu Region prize in the Japanese sign design award of 2020.

It is important that there are not colors in our outside world and that there are colors in only our brain. Therefore, we should not forget that color is just the result from subjective experience that individual brain constructs with individual color palette when we think about color design.

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Department of Human Science, Faculty of Design
Professor SUNAGA Shoji