Design Principles - Colour Theory Part One

This introduction to colour was very useful and helpful for me to start to understand how we look at colour.

Questions like how do we know a red apple is actually red were or does colour exist if no one is there to see it were asked?

Colour can affect the readability and legibility of text. 

Cold colours have short wave lengths and warmer colours have longer wave lengths.

They eye has rod and cones, Rods convey black and grey colours while the cones allow the brain to perceive colour.
There are three types of cones

• Type one is sensitive to red orange light
• Type tow is sensitive to green light
• Type three is sensitive to blue violet light

To the human eye we can actually only see three colours, Red Green and Blue.

So the Primary colour system is technically wrong, since you have to mix blue and green to get yellow.

Complimentary colours are made from the two remaining colours, such as if you're trying to get red you mix yellow and blue together.

If you mix all of them together it makes a murky non colour grey.

Subtractive colour mode is when you mix the colours it subtracts the colour because they become darker,and its the opposite for additve colours.

Chromatic Value = hue + tone/luminance = saturation

They're are more layers to colour then just flat, colour is 3D.

Hue- if its reddy orange, reddy pink, hue is the mix colours

Luminance - shades and tints, it changes the lightness and darkness of the colour

Tone - how light or dark it is in regards to the tint or shade

Saturation - the chromatic value of the colour, a high CV is a pure very red red or a low CV will be a mix

Colour can only be decided if it is collectively agreed upon within context. When a red on grey is the reddest possible, but when you put it next to a another shade of red you have decide which is the real red.

Light affects the colour and as a designer you have to be aware of where work is and what the colour will look like.

Pantone is the best thing to use for colour use, as they all are globally recognised codes on them.

TASK

We were asked to bring in 10-15 items of a certain colour there was, purple, orange, yellow, green, red and blue. We grouped together in our colours and had to put them in order.

As the table was laid out it was clear we were making a colour wheel. Our colour was purple so we chose to put items that were closet to the next colour and work inwards.

After we sorted them like that we had to use the pantone swatches to colour match the five items that were from each end of the spectrum, so quite a blue purple, a red purple, a very purple purple etc.

File (left) - DE-193-2c

Lipstick (bottom) - DE-187-1c

Mascara (right)- DE-163-1c

No 7 (top)-5175c

Cap (middle0 - DE-177-2c