Color: Although all the components are altered by context, I understood color as one to be greatly influenced by personal/cultural understandings of what certain colors represent. Dondis relates color most to emotionality, and I see this a lot in film/animation. Color palettes can be chosen to evoke specific moods; where more melancholic gray/blue scenes can be juxtaposed against more energetic scenes. Any given movie will also assign to its symbols certain colors that don’t necessarily have a unified meaning in the minds of the audience, but are created and reinforced by the repeated use of that color.

Shape: Dondis describes three basic shapes; the circle, square, and equilateral triangle. They associate certain traits to the shapes, although they admit these are arbitrary, but it makes me think of other associations we have with shape. The bouba/kiki effect is one that comes to mind, in that we form a relationship between the shape of an object and certain speech sounds. Similar to color, I understand that different shapes can be used to evoke certain feelings/initial reactions to a design based on subconscious associations we have.