Jenny Xie, writing for Figma, talks with Vice President of the Pantone Color Institute Laurie Pressman about color as a cultural language, not a decorative layer. Pressman’s starting point is that color is read, not just seen:

Color is tied to our emotions and how we interpret the world. It’s a language that reflects what’s taking place in culture.

The practical questions Pressman gives designers are “What message am I trying to convey?” and “how do I use color to help me get there?” That’s the design-system version of brand strategy: what does this choice need to make legible before anyone reads the copy?

Xie follows that with examples where the same hue changes meaning across cultures, media, and materials:

Like any language, the language of color comes with its regional dialects. While black is worn at funerals in the West, mourners in the East wear white. Depending on the context, red can convey love, anger, or urgency in the West; in the East, it’s associated with luck, prosperity, and celebration. Brand and marketing teams can’t just follow color trends or assume universal meanings. “Someone seeing a product on the shelf in Japan versus France is going to have a different color sensibility,” says Laurie, “because they’ve built up certain associations.”

Pressman also brings this back to process:

Colors don’t exist in a vacuum. They show up differently depending on the material, medium, or surface. Something that resonates on a screen may look garish in person; a hue that exists in fabric dyes may not be achievable on, say, a Band-Aid. “This is why you must consider color at the inception of the design process,” Laurie advises, “so you can make decisions with full context of the material and surface finish on what it will appear.”