In recent years, our environment has become more invasive and stimulating than ever. People have to choose carefully what to look for in their overstimulated daily lives. One of the ways to attract visual attention, which can even interrupt the cognitive task at hand, is by color and shape. This paper brings together various data concerning color and shape perception and is structured around these two items. In the first part, there is a short introduction to the work, where the issues we will deal with are explained and the main contributions of this work are presented. Then, in the second part, we explain the anatomy and physiology of the eye. We also talk about various congenital or acquired pathologies that damage color vision. In Chapter 3, we look at how to define different aspects of color: its physical and psychological perception and measurement. This is followed by a chapter on shapes. The last part is the experimental part. There we asked the question: does each shape and color attract the attention of the observer in a similar way? Our goal is to investigate whether there are colors that have a greater visual power than other colors and therefore can capture the attention of the observer more, regardless of the background (eg color or image). We also discuss how visual attention is particularly sensitive to such visual messages. For this purpose, a perceptual experiment was developed in which the respondents' preferences were examined and legible compositions of colors and shapes were obtained. This study revealed that, even when the backdrop color is meant to draw and hold the observer's attention, it can have little effect on how the viewer interprets the visual message in the case of particular colors. Shapes, such as triangles and regular shapes, have proven to be a powerful tool for attracting attention. There is a considerable difference in the preference of certain forms according to gender.