Colour Perception is based on a multitude of different things, including culture, personal taste, societal norms and any visual impairment that effects how we see colour. As a designer, colour choice will effect whether a piece works as intended or does not.
This week’s lecture focused on the subject of colour, including colour theory, colour psychology, colour models, colour blindness, accessibility concerns in relation to colour, colour systems, how culture effects how colours are perceived, key designers whose work with colour can inspire, books on colour theory and tools to make choosing colours that work together that bit easier.
Colour Theory is a scientific way of looking at colour, primary colours which when mixed create secondary colours and how further mixing then gives us our tertiary colours.
The first colour wheel was created by Sir Isaac Newton as part of his experiments into light and how what appears as white light can be split into its different colours using a prism, Newton theorised that just like music where different notes work harmoniously together to create pleasant sounds so colours must work together in a similar way to create aesthetically pleasing effects.
Today we have more advanced colour wheels containing millions of colours and as designers we use them to select the colours that work together well for our designs.
Source (https://tongal.com/blog/tongal-taught-me/color-and-film-learn-the-rules-of-color-theory-and-how-to-break-them) Last Accessed 19/10/2022
On the right of the colour wheel above you can see the different methods of choosing colours to work together, Monochromatic, using one hue, Analogous using colours that sit beside each other on the colour wheel, and complementary which uses colours which sit opposite each other on the colour wheel. These allow us as designers to choose colours that work well together for our designs.
These rules were what set our class exercise for the day to create a phone screen using a monochromatic, analogous and complimentary colour scheme, I used both Adobe Colour to help me choose colours that would work for each.
From left to right, monochromatic, analogous and complimentary, for me I prefer the analogous look myself it just is more appealing to my eye, but I can see for getting things to stand out or be emphasised in a design how using a complimentary colour would work well.
As designers there is another key component to think about with colour and that is how it will be viewed, in print or on screen as they use completely different methods to create colour.
Print uses the subtractive colour model CYMK (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black) to create different colours, whereas screen use the additive RGB (Red, Green, Blue) model, the diagram below shows it much better than I could explain it in words, but the issue to think about is when designing a print piece on a screen as the colours you see may not be the colours that are printed, this is why getting a sample piece done is essential to make sure the colours you want work.
Source (https://www.tvtechnology.com/opinions/additive-and-subtractive-color-mixing) Last Accessed 19/10/2022
When choosing colours we must take into account people who may have visual impairments, this may be a loss of eyesight or an inability to detect certain wavelengths of colour, known as colour blindness.