Visual Framework of Color Analysis of Shop Signs in India

Abstract

Shop signs contribute to the visual representation of business identities through color, form, and materials. Among these, in the context of India specifically, color becomes the foremost significant attribute for business image building in, especially, multi-cultural and competitive commercial street marketplaces. The researcher could observe and integrate certain qualities of colors displayed on shop signs through this methodological research approach of bricolage (Denzin, N., Lincoln, Y.: Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd edn. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA (2000). These qualities are the four quadrants/factors of the illustrated framework in this paper. We have redefined all the four quadrants by following an inductive rationale. This was done by selection of characteristic keywords for each quadrant from the established definitions, etymologies, and findings by researchers and practitioners in the field of design. The classification theories using morphology, thematic basis, groupings, and orderings as empirical data helped to formulate the framework of color analysis. The final picture of the framework illustrates all the four quadrants and their respective classifications along vertically and horizontally aligned domains. This form of the framework is flexible enough to provide multiple perspectives of quadrants as individual qualities as well as relative ones in a collective analytical group in order to analyze colors displayed on shop signs.