Yellow tabloid headlines attract readers the most

Toronto, Dec 21 (ANI): The yellow headlines of tabloids attract more customers into buying them unlike headlines in other colours, according to experts and graphic designers.

"It's an excellent attention-getting colour," the Globe and Mail quoted Paul Lester, a professor of communication at California State University, Fullerton, and author of Visual Communication, as saying.

Although, both yellow and red can be seen from farther away than other colours due to the longest wavelengths on the colour spectrum, yellow is believed to spark off feelings of happiness, Prof. Lester pointed out.

Thus, it is not surprising that yellow headlines regularly feature on gossip mags.

Alexander White, a typography consultant and professor at Parsons The New School for Design, in New York, said: "There's a certain degree of tackiness to yellow."

"I can't think of a better colour to use if you were trying to evoke that kind of light and not-so-serious experience of a magazine," he added.

Canadian-born gossip magazine queen, Bonnie Fuller who has held top positions at Flare, YM, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Glamour and Us Weekly and is currently president and editor-in-chief of HollywoodLife.com, also echoes the same thought.

She said: "You've got to make stories and magazine pages look inviting and exciting so that they literally reach out and pull in the reader."Why use downbeat colours? I wanted my magazines to make women feel better - feel better about themselves, feel better about their lives, be a fun and entertaining and helpful experience to read. And so I think that when you use ... a bright palette it helps to do that. It's an uplifter," she added.

However, "It all depends on the shade of yellow," said Joanna Turlej, president of Adora Graphics, an Oakville, Ontario-based graphic design company.

Kyle Meyer, founder of Typesites.com, a U.S.-based website about typographic design, added: "National Geographic is a yellow that has that prestige feeling of gold, whereas the gossip magazines shoot for something that's a little more playful." (ANI)