Coco's Image Transformed Through Color

When Conan O'Brien transitioned from the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, to a new show called Conan on TBS, promotional designs used color to emphasize his iconic hair. In a series of images that incorporate black, white and orange, and the typeface Gotham, the popular television personality is reinvented, marking the transition in his career as a talk show host.

Since the beginning of his career as a television host in 1993, O'Brien's public identity has been shaped by his striking red hair as a salient characteristic. So it makes sense that TBS would capitalize on his hair as an important and humorous visual quality for his new show. Color is strategically used to glorify and dramatize his legendary hair. It appears the graphic designer drew a shape in a program like Illustrator, filled it with a vibrant orange, including tonal gradients to create a sense of texture, and to focus the viewer's eye. Notice that in each of the nine visuals shown below, a representation of his hair is included in some way. This design motif is strengthened by the composition of each image, including the words.

Aside from the bold typeface, the colored fill of the text also works to enforce his bold personality, with white letters on a black background, the most easily legible color combination. Josef Albers discusses this concept in Interaction of Color. The use of color in these posters, and how it interacts with the overall composition, as addressed by Albers, serves to lead the viewer's eye around the image. By contrasting black and white background and words, with the striking orange color, the designer visually communicates the significance of his hair, the notable content of focus in the image. Additionally, the use of color creates a gestalt reaction in the viewer, unifying the image and text, as black, white and orange are cleverly tied together throughout each composition.

The bold use of unified colors in the promotional visuals for Conan work successfully to communicate his hair as a salient characteristic, using color in relation to the gestalt theory, and ultimately making a visually striking representation of Conan's public persona.



http://www.idsgn.org/posts/cocos-new-do/