This is where I admit that I don't really understand colors. I mean, I can tell them apart most of the time, and I get that they're different wavelengths of light, but I just don't understand what they're
for. Why are there so many? You really only need two: one for the background and one for the foreground. Am I right, or am I totally off base?
All that aside, I've noticed something else about colors: The color of horror is black. Here's a photo of a semi-random assortment of horror books (mostly short story collections) from my bookshelf.
As you can see, they're mostly black. In fact, the only one that doesn't feature the color black as a major design element is Stephen King's
Night Shift. As far as contrasting colors go, I'm seeing a lot of red/orange/gold (all pretty much the same to me) and some white. A little bit of bilious green here and there.
Even if this photo were blurred beyond recognition, you could probably tell that these were horror books just from the colors. Why is that? Why do these colors, and black in particular, signify horror? Could horror still look like horror with different colors? Do any other genres have limited palettes like this? I'm curious to hear your observations.
