Cyberpunk 2077 Artists Explain Why They Used That (In)Famous Shade of Yellow

ign.com:

If you're a regular IGN reader, when I write the words "Cyberpunk yellow", you can almost certainly picture the neon shade I'm referring to. From its earliest days, CD Projekt Red used a particular yellow in everything from artwork to announcements. Eventually, it even became a warning sign for fans, after multiple delay announcements used the colour as a backdrop.

Speaking at Polish games conference Digital Dragons, Cyberpunk lead environment artist Michał Janiszewski brought that fact up in a lecture, using a section of his talk to answer the question, "Why Is Everything So Yellow?" In essence, the fact that so many people can recall that shade proves that the team did their job right.

Early in the talk Janiszewski brought up the glass Coca-Cola bottle as a key piece of industrial design history – you can recognise it by its shape, design, the font, and the colour. CD Projekt was aiming for something similar: "We were speaking about the Coca-Cola," said Janiszewski. "The yellow colour is pretty much the same thing. It is conveying the information, it is simple to remember."

Cyberpunk artwork, backed by 'Cyberpunk yellow'. (Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

However, it wasn't simply a case of making a colour (and an accompanying design) that you'd remember – it was also an attempt to make Cyberpunk feel different from existing icons in its genre. Janiszewski made clear that the likes of Blade Runner and Judge Dredd were inspirations for Cyberpunk 2077, but the team worked from the beginning to feel distinct from them, as opposed to an impression of them.

'Cyberpunk yellow' became a part of that effort on the branding side: "Most people, when they are thinking about cyberpunk, it is like a red colour, a bit of blue," said