Nicola Owen

Colour theory and graphic design

Most people have a basic understanding of colour and the colour wheel. But there are lots of other aspects to colour, which most people don’t always know. Most people know that all colours can be divided into categories, such as primary, warm, or neutral colours, but often this is as much as they know, it is essential that designers have a better understanding of colour theory.

Designers use colour because they evoke certain emotions or because they look good most people will tell you that the latter is not the best way to approach colour designs. Although I feel that it is important to get a balance between the two, proper colour theory can help a designer create something, which both looks good and evokes emotion.



The psychological association of a colour is often more meaningful than a visual experience, which is why it is important that a designer has a good understanding of colour theory. Colours can stimulate all sorts of different emotions such as: excite, depress, tranquilize, increase appetite and create a feeling of warmth or coolness. Each colour affects us differently emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. By understanding how colour psychology influences us, we can effectively use colour therapy to give us an effective use of colour. This composition to me creates a sense of warmth; I think this is because the colours remind me of summer, which evokes the feeling of warmth and a happy emotion.

As I said earlier colours could be arranged into categories, colours are seen as warm or cool, mainly because of a universal association, but not all colours evoke the same meaning to everyone, people from different cultures often have different views.

Yellow, orange and red are associated with warm feeling, blue, green, violet are cooler feeling. Often artists use warm colours in the foreground of their pictures and cooler colours in the background to create depth.



People are familiar with the basic colour wheel but there are millions of other colours in between each of the main colours, red, yellow, blue, orange, violet, green. Artists spend year’s experminating with paints, to work out which colours work together. It is a well know saying that red and green should never be seen together expect upon a fool, but the basic colour theory says that compliementy colours such as red and green should work together. This colour composition illustrates the use of red and green together and I feel the colours do work well together but I feel the only reason for that is because I have used hues of the colour red and green and not just the standard colour on the wheel. I will leave it up to you to decide weather you feel the colours work together or not. Would this composition work if it was the anycolours together or does it have to be compliementy colours, does the colours being opposite on the colour wheel really make that much difference?

picture4essay
Originally uploaded by nic6.

“Nature doesn’t make mistakes with colour. No matter how vivid or subtle, they always seem to work together – lime greens, blues, violet pinks, yellows”

I found this quote on a website and decided to give it a try I took a picture of a birds of paradise flower. I picked the six main colours, and then I found images, which were the same colours as well as changing the colours of images to fit in with the colour range. I then randomly put the images together in no real order I just wanted them to look right. I think the theory has worked well and that this is an excellent way to guarantee that the colours work together.

“Colour not only affects other colours, but also people viewing it. It affects people emotionally and mentally. When you view a colour, it is transmitted to your eye by reflected light (general) and is encoded by the rods and cones in the retina. These ocular mechanisms invert the information and send it through the optic nerve, when the information reaches the brain, it is then decoded and it is here that the mind will translate the colour into meaning.”

Colours have different meanings all around the world, most painters are not concerned with colour psychology but graphic designers have to consider this when designing. Colours such as yellow are seen as bright and cheerful but can be over-powering if looked at for a long time. Red is considered as an angry yet energizing, pink on the other hand is seen as calming. A designer most take all this in to account when designing, it is important that the colours not only work well together but they are also pleasing to the eye.

It is not often just one colour that tigers the response to the colour, it is often the combinations of colours that surround it.

“ there are no wrong colours; we do not respond to just one colour, but to colours in combination. You could have a grey sky on a summer day, but our reaction to that grey with the vivid colours of the summer landscape would be different from the combination of a grey sky with snow white. Even the winter landscape contains many colours.”

So when design a designer not only has to decide if the colour work well together using colour theory but if also the colours evoke a meaning which works with the thing they are designing.

While I was doing my research I found this website which doesn’t take colour theory into account at all bad website the colour in the background distracts the viewer from the rest and after a while the colour starts to hurt your eyes and the text blends into the background because the colours are really similar.




Bibliography

Websites:

http://www.liquisoft.com/colortheory.html colour theory 26/11/04


http://www.wpdfd.com/wpdpal3.htm colour theory for web site designers 26/11/04

http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-theory-basics.html colour theory 22/11/04

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html colour psychology 2/12/04

http://psychology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://shibuya.com/garden/colorpsycho.html colour psychology 2/12/04

http://www.bharatmatrimony.com/astrology/color.shtml meanings of colours 21/12/04

http://www.heavenlyideas.com/color-therapy/color-psychology.html colour psychology 11/12/04

http://www.total.net/~daxx/colour_psycho.shtml colour psychology 11/12/04

http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/how.html colour theory 12/12/04

http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/color3.html colour theory 12/12/04

http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/how.html colour 2/12/04

http://koti.mbnet.fi/neptunia/quotes/clpsych.htm really bad colour theory website 12/12/04

posted by monkeynic @ 7:34 pm