210: Thou shall not let your personal color preferences hurt a project

Commentary Consider working on a book cover for a noted woman writer’s new romantic novel. She has used carnation pink on each of her twelve other novels. Her bedroom is carnation pink, and her nickname is Pinky. Pink, however, makes you recoil. You consider it weak and a sign of women’s oppression. What should you do? Clearly, using carnation pink is the correct choice. Trying to convince the author that your favorite colors, ocher and black, are better choices will have two effects. It will make the client angry, and you will be fired. More important, however, is that the ocher and black would damage Pinky’s brand. The money and time spent to reinforce the identification of pink with Pinky will be discarded. Bluntly, pursuing your own personal color choice over the needs of the project will ruin lives. SA