A Survey of Color’s Effectiveness Quality Components on Urban Billboards and Bridge Decks of Tehran (2015-2017)

 
 
 The attraction and effectiveness of advertising products or services is a relatively old method. Today, we are witnessing environmental propaganda bombardment all over the world, both in big and small cities. Every brand and service, whether new or reputable and familiar to the audience, uses a variety of visual media to introduce and promote their products and services; these include advertising media, billboards and bridge decks over the cities. Of course, with the trend of changing the face of cities and also helping to protect the environment, we are confronting the use of electro-billboards, digital billboards and urban TVs more and more every day. But the use of print media in urban environmental advertising as a beautifying and influential element in the urban environment is inevitable, which changes the face of metropolises every day, and so far no alternative has been found. In environmental advertising, one of the effective methods which has special importance is the use of attractive and appropriate colors for the desired content to maintain the urban beauty and effectiveness of advertising; which ultimately leads to citizen satisfaction. In this research, we intend to examine the quality of color use and the appropriateness of its performance in the environment and the subject of advertising on printed and fixed billboards and bridge decks in the cited period.
Billboards and bridge decks belong to the family of posters; therefore, in this article, we will define the poster scientifically only in terms of its function; because the expression of the physical and technical nature of the poster and its family is not appropriate to the subject of this article. Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher, has said that the poster is a collective image that subsides into the depths of a living society in space and time. This image gradually changes the feeling of the audience to the extent that it stimulates his creative imagination; thus, it somehow leads the audience to change social, economic, cultural and political processes. According to poster designer Rex Peteet, a good poster should convey its message accurately, quickly and clearly. But the bridge deck is actually a narrow horizontal billboard that mounts to the pedestrian or ride bridge railings and has the same functions as a poster. Its length is sometimes as wide as one direction of the highway and sometimes as wide as two directions. But it does not have a specific standard; so it can have any width and length. Among the numerous components (we will discuss in the next articles) that make an urban billboard effective, it is to pay attention to the color and its qualities and accordance with the environment and of course induce the content of the message.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the status of colors used in printed urban   billboards and bridge decks in Tehran during the period 2015 to 2017 from the perspective of effectiveness of color.
This research seeks to answer the questions that: What are the effective qualities on the effectiveness of color in billboards and decks of Tehran Bridge (2015-2017)? And is there a trend of change in these three years?
The main hypothesis: Although Tehran city billboards (2015-2017) communicate explicitly and easily with the audience, but they have mainly used colors in harmony with the season of publication, they are dark in color, and they have used arbitrary colors and they have not benefited significantly from other qualities that affect the effectiveness of color. Sub-hypothesis: During the period of this paper, the process of using color quality has not changed significantly.
In this paper, the research method is descriptive-analytical based on cross-sectional survey; which has been done about 404 billboards and bridge decks that were published in Tehran in 2015, 2016 and 2017. The choice of this time period was not optional and was only due to the access to these boards, in which the cases examined in them are apparently observable at all times. For classification and information analysis, first the works are examined from the perspective of color status and qualities affecting the colors used, and then the published boards for a total of three years together, and finally the frequency of each of the three years is calculated separately; to rely on these results beyond suspicion and to gain a better understanding of the positive and negative points of using color in the statistical community, we aim to examine its effectiveness. Because the evidence of color and its qualities are condensed by subconscious of the audience.
The results show that although the urban billboards of Tehran (2015-2017) of statistical community, communicate explicitly and easily with the audience, they have are used mainly colors in accordance with the publication season; the glitter of the colors of the work will disappear in the fuss of the colors of the environment, and in this case, a lot of silent images will be created that not only do not attract the attention of the audience, but also confuse them. Also, in these works, contrasting colors that are suitable for attracting the audience have been used to a small extent (18%). In 65% of cases, they have dark color, which reduces the brightness of the combination, which is intended to attract and create the appropriate vibrancy of urban billboards; and then in the statistical community, arbitrary colors are used at a rate of 68%, which is used according to the designer's taste and does not have public meanings; Also, symbolic colors have been used in only 20% of cases. Finally, there is no significant benefit from other color qualities that affect effectiveness. This violates the effect of advertising and does not follow the process of attracting, discovering and convincing the audience. Also, during the period of this research, the process of using colors has not changed significantly.
The point to consider about the concepts of colors is that although the topics related to the concept of colors are not definitive, but in our opinion the concepts of color in urban advertising can be divided into 4 groups:

Psychological concept is the feeling of each person that everyone has towards color. But because the physiological structure of humans is the same, in many cases, the sense of most audiences is alike.
Contractual concepts, such as the colors of traffic signs that are selected and laid out so everyone is trained to understand them. Thus, they are public, but they are mostly unrelated to the psychological meaning of colors.
A symbolic concept that encompasses a part of the whole and is mostly used to induce abstract concepts such as the green flag to express peace in Islam. These kinds of concepts are also termed as a result of education and therefore become public.
Arbitrary concepts that are used only according to the designer's taste and are not public; it has a metaphorical state and may become symbolic due to repeated use.

Today, most of the first three types of color concepts are used in advertising. But in most of the works of the statistical community, arbitrary colors (68%) are being used. This shows that despite all the importance that theorists have given to color, the color selecting process is rarely done with accurate and calculated analysis. Designers need to know what reaction and effect their chosen color will have on the environment, and how wide the scope of that color will be in the effectiveness of environmental advertising.