In 1923 Wassily Kandinsky , student at the Bauhaus, directed a simple experiment. Asking people to fill in a triangle, square and a circle in the primary colours. He created this experiment to find a correspondence between shape and colour.
When thinking of this myself I developed a response based on synesthesia. This was caused by memories of learning three dimensional shapes in primary school. I distinctly recall the colours of the block shown to demonstrate this, many of which used bright primary colours. I often associate the appropriate two dimensional shape to the ones I was shown at this time. This is something I have subconsciously done since that moment.
I asked a few people I knew to take the test to see what varied responses I would get. Each person had their own unique and technically still correct way of explaining why their thought process led them to the results they got.
The first person I asked created this combination. They explained that they chose red for the triangle because 'red' had three letters. They used the same logic for the square with 'blue'. This left the remaining one with the yellow circle.
Kandinsky considered to be the correct answer at the time of his experiment.
The next person I asked created a different combination. They chose to colour them in order of the light spectrum as it seemed to make the most sense to them. This is the same colour combination Kandinsky considered to be the correct answer at the time of his experiment.
This colour combination was considered overall the most popular at the time however I believe that this may have differed through time due to traffic signals and other more 'modern' symbolism. It is more common for people to associate yellow with the sun or The square with a body of water or the sky.
