The Hidden Science of Colour in Conservation Storytelling
Why green isn't always the colour of nature, and what science can teach us about designing conservation stories that people actually notice.
Close your eyes for a moment and picture the logo of an environmental organization.
What do you see?
Chances are you’re imagining something green and blue. Maybe there’s a leaf. There’s probably a tree or an iconic, flashy species, and maybe even a river winding through a landscape. It’s so common that we barely notice it anymore.
But what if our default colour palette is actually making conservation communication less effective?
As designers, scientists, and communicators, we spend a lot of time thinking about the words we use. We carefully craft messaging, edit reports, and refine calls to action. Yet before someone reads a single word, their brain has already started processing something else entirely.
COLOUR
Colour isn’t just for making things “pretty”. It’s actually incredibly important information, and I believe that understanding how we perceive it can help us tell better conservation stories.
Colour is one of the brain's fastest storytellers
Way before we consciously decide whether something is interesting, our visual system has already begun sorting information based on brightness, contrast, colour, and movement. Just think about how you gravitate towards certain books in the bookstore long before you've even read the cover... that's the power of colour at work!
And colours is processed via our eyes by two main types of photoreceptors: cones and rods.
Cones are responsible for colour vision. Humans typically have three types of cones, each sensitive to different wavelengths of light, roughly corresponding to reds, greens, and blues. Together, they allow us to perceive millions of colour combinations.
Rods (the oldest parts of our visual system!), on the other hand, don’t perceive colour. They’re much more sensitive to light and movement, especially in low-light conditions. Rods have a much larger role when it comes to colour contrast (the difference in brightness or colour between an element and its background) in our visual environment.
While cones help us distinguish the rich colours of a sunset, rods can help us notice movement and shape in our peripheral vision or navigate through a dimly lit forest.
We often think choosing the “right” colour is the most important decision. But our visual system reminds us that contrast often matters just as much as colour itself. A beautifully chosen palette loses its impact if all the colours blend together.
Good design doesn't mean something is just colourful, it also means that it’s legible, intentional, and easy for our brains to navigate.
Studio Experiment
Open the homepage of a conservation organization (think Canadian Wildlife Federation, World Wildlife Fund, IUCN, CPAWS, Save our Seas Foundation etc).
Now squint.
Can you tell where your eyes are supposed to go first?
If everything blends together, it may not be a colour problem, it might be a contrast problem.
Colour isn’t universal
When you look up the emotional meanings behind colours, you usually get one meaning:
“Blue means trust”
“Red means danger”
“Green means calm”
And because of this, we tend to have this universal misconception that colours have fixed emotional meanings. And while there is some truth to these emotional meanings, they are far from universal.
Colour is shaped by light and the other visual influences surrounding the thing you are observing (e.g., the same green will look different if it's placed on a light background compared to a dark background). But how we perceive colour and the meaning behind them are shaped more by our own experiences.
For example, white symbolizes weddings in some cultures and mourning in others. Red can communicate celebration, danger, love, prosperity, or political identity depending on where you are in the world. Even green carries different associations. It can signify environmental stewardship, wealth, religion, or agriculture.
The way we perceive colours, and the feelings we get when we look at colours are all a result of the memory, culture, context, and lived experience we have with them. In essence, their meanings are always fluid, between oneself, people, and communities.
Colour doesn’t tell the whole story, it simply starts one.
Why is conservation always green?
If green can mean many things to many different people and cultures, why have conservation organizations embraced it so completely? The answer is pretty straightforward… in conservation contexts:
Green reminds us of forests, leaves, growth, and life.
Blue reminds us of water, the sky, fluidity, calm.
They are logical choices, but when everyone uses them, there is an unintended consequence - everyone looks the same, and therefore, everyone becomes less memorable, and then we just end up with visual white noise.
If I had a banner at an event with all the nature organizations at the event (including my own!), I can bet you not one of them would stand out. But just think about how quickly your eye would move to a logo if it had a pop of yellow or orange within it. It doesn’t take much, but that one pop of colour could be the reason a potential donor finds my organization among all the other organizational logos.
Nature isn’t just green
So, what colour is nature? Inherently, I think most of us think of greens or blues, which is understandable. Our lives and media have been saturated with these colours whenever we talk about nature. But I don’t think nature is green or blue, I think nature is...
Glacier blue reflecting off the frozen ice caps.
It’s orange lichen spreading across granite.
It’s purple sea stars clinging to tide pools.
It’s the golden glow of prairie grass in late summer.
It’s charcoal rock after a wildfire.
It’s the silver bark of trembling aspen.
It’s crimson maples in October.
It’s white snow stretching across alpine peaks.
The natural world is so far from being defined by a single colour. It is defined by multitudes of colours.
Perhaps our visual language should reflect that too.
Designing with intention
This doesn’t mean conservation organizations should abandon blue or green altogether (heck, even my logo is variations of blues).
Green is still an incredibly powerful colour. But it shouldn’t be the default simply because that’s what everyone else is doing.
Instead, I think colour should begin with the story you are trying to tell. The emotions you are trying to evoke. The image you want people to imagine.
For example, a coastal organization might naturally lean into ocean blues, weathered greys, and some sand tones.
Whereas a prairie grassland initiative might find inspiration in warm golds, deep browns, and expansive blues.
Even more so, an organization focused on urban biodiversity could draw their colour palette from the colours found in city parks, pollinators, murals, or community gardens.
Ultimately, I think the best palettes are those that emerge from the place, not from conventional means.
Studio Experiment
Think about a place you really love.
Write down the first ten colours that come to mind. Don’t overthink it.
Were they all green?
Or did your memory reveal something much richer?
Five ways to think differently about colour in conservation storytelling
“Effective conservation branding isn’t about choosing the greenest palette, it’s about choosing colours that reflect your landscape, your audience, and your story.”
So, as you move forward with telling conservation stories, whether through your organization, at events, or in social media, keep these things in mind when in the design and communication process:
Start with place. Let the landscape you’re representing shape your palette rather than relying on assumptions about what conservation “should” look like. For example, a prairie organization probably shouldn’t look like a rainforest. You could even go take a photograph of your landscape and choose colours from your image to inspire your design!
Design for contrast before colour. If people can’t easily find the most important information, changing colours won’t always solve the problem.
Build a supporting palette. Green doesn’t have to disappear but it also doesn’t have to do all the work. Find other colours that support and enhance it, or use green as a supporting colour instead of it being the focal colour of your palette.
Consider your audience. Different cultures interpret colour differently. Who is your audience? Your lab, your town, your country, everyone? The same palette may communicate something very different to different audiences.
Choose colours that support emotion, not stereotypes. Ask what emotion you want someone to feel when they look at your design or logo. Hope? Urgency? Wonder? Curiosity? Warmth? Let your palette reinforce that emotional journey.
Conservation has never been about protecting one species or one ecosystem. It’s about protecting extraordinary diversity. Maybe our visual language needs to reflect that too. I’m not saying that the goal is to abandon green and blue, but it’s to be more intentional with every colour we choose, because colour ends up being one of the first stories we tell in almost everything we produce.
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