Color design based on color-to-flavor synesthesia using fuzzy computation

Abstract

Color of food, even the color design of its outer package, would affect not only our appetites but the flavor sense. To facilitate flavor-image based color design, this research aims at the synesthesia relationship from colors to flavors. Generally, a designer carries out the color-planning activities based upon his/her individual experience, but this is not objective enough and very inefficient. If the designer possessed the facility to access a powerful tool to evaluate the image of the designed color schemes, he or she could quickly display the appropriate color schemes during the conceptual design period. Through the quantitative methods of triangular fuzzy numbers, fuzzy total utility values and fuzzy utility similarity, the subject's qualitative judgment on color-to-flavor image can be quantified and then served as the knowledge database of the proposed color-design evaluation model. The image experiments on single colors, two-color combinations, and three-color combinations are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Finally, a color-combination design for a food package is presented based on the consistence between color-to-flavor synesthesia of the designed colors and the flavor of the food.