Mini Design Lesson II: Color

There has been a tremendous amount of research on how color affects human beings and some of this research suggests that men and women may respond to colors differently. Color effects us emotionally, with different colors evoking different emotions. In short color has the capacity to effect the human nervous system.


Color Vocabulary:

• Hue: refers to the names of the primary colors, red, green and blue.
  
• Value: lightness and darkness of the color - the amount of white or black added.
  
• Intensity: the purity or saturation of the color
  
• Monochromatic color: use of one color where only the value of the color changes
  
• Analogous colors: colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel, e.g. yellow and green

Analogous colors next to each other on the color wheel "get along" and are referred to as being harmonious. Analogous colors are often used in visual design and have a soothing affect.

Complementary colors: colors opposite to each other on the color wheel, e.g. Blue-violet and yellow, represent colors positioned across from each other on the color wheel. Complimentary colors exhibit more contrast when positioned adjacent to each other -for example yellow appears more intense when positioned on or beside blue or violet (see picture below).

In the photograph above - green and yellow are analogous colors that harmonize where as the violet color of the shooting stars appears more intense against a complementary colored background.

Warm colors include: yellows, red and orange we associate these with blood, sun and fire.

Cool colors include: violet, blue and green because of our association with snow and ice.

Source: COMPOSITION & the ELEMENTS of VISUAL DESIGN

Activity: Record the Colors Around You

As you are out and about this season, note the colors around you and how they make you feel. What colors are you most drawn to? Which ones repel you? What types of color combinations do you like? Are the Analagous? Complimentary? Cool? Warm?

Do you find these colors in your wardrobe? in your house? If not, why?

Color Harmony: Layout: More than 800 Color Ways for Layouts That Work

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Ruminations on Color

Some more light reading, this time from Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses -

At twilight, pink wings tremble along the hilltops, and purlpe does a shadow dance over the lake. When light hits a red car on the streetcorner, only the red rays are reflected into our eyes, and we say "red." The other rays are absorbed by the car's paint job. When light hits a blue mailbox, the blue is reflected, and we say "blue." The color we see is always the one being reflected, the one that doesn't stay put and get absorbed. We see the rejected color, and say "an apple is red." But in truth an apple is everything but red.

Not all languages name all colors. Japanese only recently included a word for "blue." In past ages aoi was an umbrella word that stood for the range of colors from green and blue to violet. Primitive languages first develop words for black and white, then add red, then yellow and green; many lump blue and green together, and some don't bother distinguishing between other colors of the spectrum....

Welsh uses the word glas to describe the color of a mountain lake, which might in fact be blue, gray, or green. In Swahili, nyakundu could mean brown, yellow, or red. The Jalé tribespeople of New Guinea, having no word for green are content to refer to a leaf as dark or light.

Cloud's illusions

It is a childhood rite of passage, I think, to sit on the grass looking up at a blue sky filled with billowy clouds that magically take the shape of our imaginations - a bear, lion, cricket, horse.... I found, that while this game was fun, I tended to try to identify the artist that may've painted that particular sky that day: the whispy clouds of Renoir, the open sky of Wyeth, the dramatic sky of Thomas Hart Benton... and as my vocabulary of artists grew, so did my vocabulary of clouds.

Last night, standing at my living room window I watched the sunset over the mountains and, as with most days, was in absolute awe as vibrant oranges, reds, violets, and indigos splashed across a rather Dante-esque sky. At one point, my perspective was inverted and the clouds looked as if they were wet sand being revealed by a receeding tide. Pure Magic! At moments like these, there is an understanding of how the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Mayans, Mesopotamians... all felt when looking up at such an amazing sight.

I know I'm not the only one completely awed by the ever changing palette of the sky. Yesterday I came across the Web site of the Cloud Appreciation Society, whose slogan is "look up and marvel." How often do we actually do this? The act of looking up is no big deal, but how often do we look up and marvel? -How often are we filled with wonder or astonishment?

Challenge: Marvel at something today

Look up and marvel at the sky, look down and marvel at the inchworm. Marvel at your cats persistence... etc.

Activity: Look Marvel up in the dictionary

List as many marvelous synonyms for Marvel as you can. Write each word in a new Marvelous way. Hang your list in a Marvelous location, so that you may marvel at it.