Hidden Design Dimensions
What The Experts Know 
About Color

The Big Bertha line of golf clubs has been more successful than any other line in history. It has not only sold phenomenally well, it has done so at premium prices. Ely Callaway came to the golf industry after successful careers producing high end fabrics and wines. He knew the importance of hiring the best designers possible. From the beginning, Ely and the gang from Carlsbad believed that affluent golfers would pay huge amounts for golf equipment if, and only if, they believed that were investing in the best. They fully understood the benefits derived from engendering an image  for their products of trustworthy strength and reliable performance. Ely and his very highly paid design crew also knew that well-to-do people insist on seeing their bankers, lawyers and investment counselors in suits of gray or navy blue - the colors of strength and trust. These, and other color design secrets, are explored in this article.

Design: As much Science as Art

Human beings all have certain subtle, common reactions to visual input. We all know some of the obvious basics, but, for the most part, only those who have attended design schools have been educated as to the full extent of human emotional response to design input. Few laymen understand that design is as much science as it is art. This concept is often an exceedingly tough sell to members of the general public who are firmly entrenched in the "I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like" mentality. Good designers know how ludicrous that commonly held belief is. Color, shapes, textures and their interactive relationships can all be manipulated to produce dramatic impact upon the senses of every human being. You may not believe in this concept, but rest assured that the highly paid designers at Callaway and Cobra do.

The reasons for the reactions all humans have to external input are deeply seated in our primal psyches. A puppy is frightened by the smell and sound of a rattlesnake. It is instinctual. It was not taught to him. So it is with a thousand sensory inputs that have been passed on to human beings generation after generation. Many biases and inclinations are a psychological result of conditioning, but most are genetic.

Chickens actually produce a higher percentage of female chicks if they are housed under pink lighting; more male offspring if they are housed under blue lights. It has been demonstrated that prisons which have had their interiors painted in nursery colors - baby blue, pink, pale yellow - experience a marked decline in violent behavior from their inmates. This effect is augmented if design patterns are used that create a sensation of depth and expansiveness. Angry and anxious souls are pacified to one degree or another whether they are toddlers or gangsters. 

Golfers hitting pink or baby blue golf balls slow their tempos and reduce their swing speeds. A man feels foolish trying to clobber a pink golf ball. Women intent on swinging hard generally shun the pastel decorator colors of some women's equipment in favor of the grays and blacks of men's equipment. Those content with non-aggressive swings favor the softer, gentler colors.

Black is the color of power. It is the color traditionally associated with dominance, evil and the unknown. Black is the absence of all visual input. Blackness is uncomfortable to every to every sighted human to one extent or another. We need visual input to survive. Sight is the sense we trust most - "seeing is believing". The same reason we fear black is what makes us feel empowered when it is on our side - hiding in dark corners, lurking in shadows, wearing dark glasses and cloaking ourselves in dark clothing. Black is the color of biker gang members, criminals, sadists, judges, undertakers, clergymen and power limousine owners. Black is the favored color of all who demand unquestioning obedience - absolute power.

Many golfers cannot successfully use black clubs. They have a tendency to grip them too firmly and to swing far too hard for optimum results. A major shaft company took a group of identical drivers and painted the shafts black on half of them and champagne on the other half. During a "blind" test the majority of male golfers swore that they could hit the black-shafted drivers farther than they could hit the champagne-shafted drivers. Few realized that the clubs were identical. 

Black softened into gray becomes the color of strength and solidity - the color of steel and stone and the color of a banker's suit. Gray is also the color most often used in the design of successful drivers and fairway woods. It is the color of Big Berthas, Titleist 975's and King Cobras. When shafts were made exclusively of chromed steel black was used more often as a head color in conjunction with the silvery sheen of the shaft. The balance of the two shades produced the effect of gray. When graphite, which is pencil gray, came into popularity dark gray heads soon became the standard. It had been rarely used before the era of graphite shafts. Ely Callaway, more than anyone, understood that the most important design element in the creation of a successful driver was that which made a golfer believe that his weapon of choice was solid and reliable. A golfer who has faith in his club makes a more relaxed and confident swing. He hits better shots as a result of that trust. A Big Bertha painted orange and blue would not have worked as well for the exact same reason that a golfer is very nervous when leaving his money in a bank run by men wearing green suits and yellow shirts. Gray speaks of solidity, quiet strength and trustworthiness. Gray calms a restless soul. Tempo changes in response to gray.

Sky blue energizes an individual. The brain actually excretes a hormone in response to sky blue that puts the brain's owner in a better, more active mood. The reason for this is simple. All of our ancestors were originally hunter-gatherers. Those who wandered too far away from the cave or shelter on gray, gloomy days were more apt to be caught by bad weather, storms and falling temperatures. Their life expectancy was lowered. One cold, sleety rain of long duration could all but obliterate a tribe that had been stranded out in the savannah many miles away from a warming fire. Conversely, those who did not "make hay while the sun was shining" ran out of food and were forced out later when beset by hunger into inclement weather. We all all know the feeling of walking out into a bright, vivid morning, looking up at the brilliant blue sky and feeling that strong, unmistakable urge to go out and do something - anything. We do not get that feeling when we walk out and look up at gray skies. Gray makes us want to settle in and relax. It is a perfect counterbalance to the over-anxiety that afflicts human beings on the golf course. because of the energizing effect, uptight golfers do not want to play with clubs festooned in bright, buoyant colors such as sky blue.

Gray (especially pale, brown, mouse gray) is known as the most drab of colors. Too much of it is so relaxing that it saps all of the energy out of an environment.  Surprisingly though, flat, neutral gray is listed by the majority of designers and artists as their most favored colored probably because it competes the least with other colors thus allowing for the maximization of the impact created by design accents and color highlights. Many golf clubs are simply the gray color of the metals that comprise their makeup, but if that color was not conducive to sales, it would be changed.

Gray has a calm, understated beauty of its own. It is the most sophisticated of colors. The phenomenal success of the Callaway Big Berthas A cool, blue-gray, such as the color used by Callaway on their shafts, is a calm color that has a touch of the pleasantness of blue added to it. The charcoal grip with accents of silver farther embellishes this symphony in grays.

Titleist, Cleveland and countless others have taken their design cues from this winning combination.

Navy blue is in many ways the ultimate power color. It speaks of strength, dignity and trustworthiness. It is the color that you most want to see adorning the staff of your ocean liner, airplane or congressional committee. It is a foolish politician who does not understand navy blue.

Dark blue has traditionally been used only rarely on golf clubs. One very notable exception to this comes from the design geniuses at Callaway. The printing and accent colors on their famous, gray woods have often been navy blue. It is the accent color on their new HawkEye irons. The newest Callaway woods are making a rather unique transition into a very rarely used color called "Payne's Gray". This nearly black color is a combination of charcoal gray and navy blue. Design logic says that this is an ultimate power/strength/trust combination, but only time will tell if it endures in the marketplace. The aging yuppies who comprise the bulk of Callaway's clientele might find it a bit too close to black for their wine-sipping sensibilities. Update 4/02: Since this article was written, deep, dark blue that fades into black has become popular on many new woods.

photo courtesy of Callaway

Shades of green relax a human being. We all like to rest and relax in a place that feels like forest glade. Interior designers never use green as a dominant color in a fast food restaurant where rapid turnover is crucial to profitability. They use shades of red, orange and yellow to energize their customers into leaving as soon as their meals are completed. On a golf club, green is a soothing color. It must be faded to black to give any impression of power as is the case with the popular True Temper EI-70 shafts.

White is for purity and cleanliness. Any stain or discoloration shows. White is virtually never used as anything except accent coloration in men's golf clubs. Golf is a hunter-gatherer game. Men want a tough product capable if ripping and digging. White is all wrong for the job at hand. 

We want our nurses and brides to wear white. We don't want to see them in red, the color of passion and bloodlust. Anyone who ever saw Bette Davis in "Jezebel" will remember the crushing blow she received from Southern society for wearing a red dress to a debutant ball. The film was in black and white, but still the image of the red dress remains firmly affixed in the mind. 

There are two basic reds. One is warm; the red of fire engines and sports cars. The other red is cool in color temperature. It is the red of roses or burgundy. Both generate sexual responses from human beings, but strangely, warm red engenders passion in males and cool red inspires passion in females. Take note of passing automobiles on the highway. Hot red sports cars are bought almost exclusively by youthful males. Cool red, snappy, but practical cars are chosen by youthful females. Performance cars are rarely ever painted burgundy red. The irony is that both sexes feel that they are buying "sexually attractive" vehicles unaware that the attraction is oriented in the wrong direction.

Hot red shafts have been used often in golf clubs. A number of shafts have mixed it with black to create sexy power clubs such as Wilson's Killer Whale line. Such product lines do not endure, however. In recent years, Grafalloy has had considerable success with their burgundy, ultralight ProLite series, but again, these shafts are intended for male golfers. They do not perceive burgundy as sexual. They perceive it as elegant, sophisticated and refined. Men respond to these shafts with an inclination to swing easy. Burgundy does not engender any visual sensation of being strong.

Pink is an obvious color - its for little girls. Adult women who wear a lot of pink want to be perceived as girlish and overly feminine. Hot pink is for hot little girls who want to be very feminine, but wild.

Yellow is the favorite color of manic depressives as is best illustrated by the work of Vincent Van Gogh. It is nature's warning color - the caution color, hence its use on school busses and traffic signs. It is used sparingly in golf club design, although the popular, new training club from Momentus uses it to great effect. The deep yellow shaft seems to say, "Don't overswing this heavy sucker - you'll rip a muscle if you do."

Purple is the confusion color. The mind's eye is receiving the cool, calming effect of blue at the same time it is receiving the warm, emotional input of red. As Leonardo DaVinci said, "It is confusion in the spectrum." It disorients the viewer. That is why deep purple is the color of royalty. Its use, coupled with an elevated platform, would create subtle confusions and disorientations in the person being addressed. It was such an effective device that a number of regimes in history have outlawed the wearing of purple by any person not of royal blood.

Few home, few restaurants, hotel rooms, automobiles, boats or any other environment intended for the comfort of human beings ever use the color purple to any noticeable extent as an interior color. Branif Airlines painted their airplanes purple in an attempt to create a modern, distinctive image. They went out of business not too long afterwards. Cleveland made the mistake of using purple as the key color in their innovative inset-offset VAS irons of the early nineties. They soon had to rescind on the choice and return to a safe, neutral gray. The design, itself, was confusing in its newness; the color selection just added to consumer uncertainty.

Blue is for boys; pink is for girls. Purple, again following the "confusion in the spectrum" theme, is the signal color for many gay establishments such as bars and inns. Purples and lavenders are almost never seen in traditional male dress not even as accent colors.

As any good painter or floral arranger will tell you that purple is best used when nullified with yellows. The two colors interact to create a sense of harmony. This is due to their direct apposition in the color wheel. They neutralize each other to a large extent. This is why UST chose the combination for their striking, new Pro Force shafts.

The second, and more clever, reason for UST's color choice is the visual impact of the colors as they are used in their broadly banded forms. Each shaft makes a strong visual statement that serves as a billboard for UST. The visual statement is unmistakable, even from a distance. The colors combine to say, "Caution, Beware - Radical Authority". That is exactly the message that the intended target demographic - young, athletic males in this case - most wants to transmit. The users of the Pro Force shafts actually take comfort in the fact that they are making their playing partners/opponents uncomfortable in the presence of their power. These shafts will not sell well to retired Sunday school teachers.

Brown is traditionally left to objects made of wood, fabric or leather. It is a warm, organic, giving color that does not suit metals. It has been almost completely ignored in the world of metal and graphite golf club design. A coppery, metallic brown was made popular in the nineties by TaylorMade, but that was as much reddish-orange as it was brown. It looked like the metal, copper.

TaylorMade has evolved their coppery color into an orange. They will be forced to migrate away from their current shade before too very long due to reduced sales. Why such a prediction? Simple - orange is almost everyone's least favorite color. A casual inventory of its use in automobiles, interiors, clothing and furniture will demonstrate that fact. It makes its most common public appearances in fast food restaurants - those establishments that have been designed to generate fast turnover of clientele. 

All good artists know that too much orange will kill any endeavor. It's for the glow of fire and heat. A little bit is good; too much destroys. It does not take great deal of it to make a human being uncomfortable. Humans, and other creatures, who did not instinctually understand that they should run, fly, slither or crawl away from too much orange glow were killed off by fires many centuries ago. TaylorMade will have to return to the cool, metallic shade of copper. No ifs, ands or buts about it.

There are many aspects to the good design of golf clubs. Color is one of them. It would take several very large books to fully explore all of the nuances of its proper use.

About Peter Keating
Peter Keating studied art history, painting and design at the University of Pennsylvania and the Maryland Institute of Art. An avid golfer for many years, Peter is internationally known for his landscape and golf course paintings. He is the Art Director for Links New England, the publisher of Swingweight.Com, Golf Club Review.Com and Golf Insite Magazine.