Colour

Colours are one of the main components in graphic design used in a wide variety of forms, from expressing yourself to making a website more accessible using colours.

Colour theory is something we are involved with every day as designers and artists. It’s easy to choose colours to use in your project, but do they work together? Does the colour choice make sense? There are several aspects when you’re going to choose colours for a design project, and there is a lot to keep in mind especially if you’re expecting a larger audience to see it.

The basics of colour were brought up for today’s class, we started off with what the colour wheel was, as well as how we understood the basic colours; Yellow, Blue, and Red with different contrasts, as well as the colours in between them in the colour wheel.

Since we were going through the basics of colour theory, analogous and complementary colours were brought up, which is important aspects of design. There are several ways you can approach how to choose which colours to use in a design, but two of the more well-known ones are always a safe choice.

Analogous Colours are groups of colours in the colour wheel that appear next to each other, for example, yellow, yellow-orange and orange. Analogous colour palettes are easy to use, they create comfortable designs. They’re often found in nature as well and are very harmonious and pleasing to look at.

Complementary colours are the polar opposite of a colour you’re working with to find a harmonious colour to match, for example, red and green. This method acts as an amplifier making the colours appear more vividly and pop, making the colours appear brighter, grabbing the users attention.

After learning about Complementary Colours as well as Analogous Colours, we were given a task to play around with Adobe Color to create our own colour schemes using the website’s tools.

Here are the four different options of colours I chose to work with, which was the following:

• • Analogous
  • Monochromatic
  • Complementary
  • Split Complementary

We were asked to do this task to get a better understanding of how we can use the colour wheel to our advantage in design as well as using different tools for help.

Accessibility

When we decide which colours are being used in the design, especially websites and apps for larger audiences, we also have to think about perception from the users. The vast majority of the users might not have any disability, but there is a minority that has visual disabilities, such as colourblindness. For our second task, we were asked to go onto our favourite websites copy the URL, paste the URL onto a website called toptal.com that has a colourblindness filter, and get a better understanding of how the visual disability colourblindness affects the colours on a website that is normally vivid. I chose to have a look at the steam website. I learned quite a lot from doing this task, as it gave us an idea of how colours twist and change depending on who’s viewing the website.

Psychology & Culture

We interact with colour each and every day and it’s only natural for us to associate certain colours with certain elements, such as red is often a sign of warning of some sort, or bad, as well as rage. While green is a colour associated with Good, safe and that something went positive.

Colours in IxD are extremely important since it’s a form of communication without using words or symbols. But we need to also have in mind that, even though certain colours might mean something specific for us it might not be the same in other countries. It’s important for designers to be educated about different cultures and what certain colours mean to them, especially if you’re designing something for an international company. Colours that are positive for us can be seen as negative for someone else. For example; white for us in many western countries means purity, but for some instances in China, for example, it’s a colour that’s associated with death and mourning.

These are several elements that need to be kept in mind when making a design for a company, another thing that needs to be kept in mind is the brand message, which of course can be done with colours, but to also keep in mind what their audience is, where they’re from, their expectations, their preferences, what is their competitor’s colours and the consistency of the brand. All of this can be done with colour.

A famous logo like McDonald for example was designed not because of red and yellow being pretty colours and suited their mascot nicely, but because of the impact, the colours have on the human mind and their customers. Yellow is a vivid warm colour associated with happiness and the sun, and Red in this case is a stimulating colour, which can be seen as a colour associated with attraction as well as making you hungry. Those two colours are also vivid that can be spotted from far away. Our brain processes colours before text and imagery, which is why colours in branding are extremely important.

For our third task we were asked to look into the Material colour system, from there we chose two colours, one primary colour as well as one secondary colour, with those two colours picked out we also picked out one variant for each colour we chose. With those colours, we were asked to make a UI for an app.

I made a quick design of an app that would portray art pieces, Using a blue, dark turquoise as my primary and a dull orange as my secondary.
I used the website material.io as directed by our course director for this task.

There are several ways to find colours, using different tools and different colour systems, such as HSB, HEX and RGB as well as online tools to find and as well get help to find a good colour palette.

I paint during my free time and have for a very long time, since I also studied art during my teenage years in highschool. Colour theory is not something new for me but from this class I were given a whole other view on it, understanding the importance it has on brands as well as customers and what you need to keep in mind as well use when making a colour palette.

Thank you.