What does red mean to you?

I’ve recently been in Hong Kong and ran a really quick retrospective with the project team. I handed out red and green post-it notes and asked the team to write down things that went well and things that went not so well. They then stuck the post-its on the board, red “not so wells” on the left and green “goods” on the right. Only it didn’t quite work like that. In my western mind I’d assumed that green is good and red is bad. Not so in China where red is an auspicious and lucky colour…

Red and green post-its confused in a project retrospective.  cultural differences were forgotten

2 Comments

  1. Gino · Tuesday, 13 February, 2007

    By the way, a trip to your local Chinatown will also reveal that green is also an “auspicious and lucky” (sic) color.

    There was a period of time on CCTV, a few years ago, when stock market gains were reported in red and losses in green, which we speculated was ordered by some cadre, somewhere, but I think that has been reversed to fit the convention.

  2. dssssssssssss · Monday, 25 February, 2008

    i think it is a color (of course) and it is bright in fact, i love bright red that is every shiny lol!

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