Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Use of Color in Design

by John Eberhard

 

Color and the selection of colors in the development of a color scheme is one of the most vital elements to use properly in graphic design, and is one area where non-professionals are usually not well trained.

 

Although the use of color is very much subject to opinion, you might be surprised to know that there is a considerable technology of the use of color. And if you follow the general rules, you will usually have a color scheme that is integrated and aesthetic, and if you violate the rules, you can end up with a color scheme that is disjointed and hideous.

 

The first thing to know about color and color schemes is the use of the color wheel. I have scanned and included here a copy of a simple color wheel from the book “Color Harmony” by Hieaki Chijiiwa, which I recommend.            Color Wheel Graphic

 

When you’re deciding on colors for a color scheme for a web site, a promo piece, a direct mail piece, an ad, or a page or spread in a magazine, you want to keep it simple. You should have no more than two dominant colors (not including black and white) in that web site, promo piece, ad, spread or whatever. When I say “dominant colors” I mean the colors that are represented in large areas. You can have other colors in small areas (called “spot color”). But for your big, broad areas of the piece, you want only two colors, or at the most three.

 

So how do you select those two colors? Well the color wheel can be your guide. One method I use frequently which works well is to select color opposites on the wheel. Use of color opposites tends to give you an integrated and aesthetic look. By this I mean, mainly: blue-orange, red-green, yellow-purple.

 

I have used blue-orange a lot in designs during my career, usually with great results. Red-green tends to give you a sort of Christmas look, but you can get around this by using subdued shades of either green or red, like dark green or burgundy. Yellow-purple can give you some very striking results and I have seen it used very well. Although technically according to the rules it should not work, I have built color schemes using blue and red and achieved very good results.

 

It’s good to have a near-balance between the two dominant colors, but usually with one color being more dominant.

 

Once you have your dominant colors in there, you can start adding some spot colors to make your design more alive. For example, if you are working with a blue-orange color scheme, you should figure out a way to bring in some small areas of yellow or red. This makes the design more alive. But don’t make these other colors dominant or you could end up with a mess. For example, you would not want to make a design with equal parts of blue, red and yellow. I’ve seen it done and it is not pretty.

 

I advise spending a little time looking at some web sites, promo pieces, advertisements, magazine spreads, etc., to see how they use color and how they put their color schemes together. You will see some that are hideous and garish in their use of color, and some that are works of art.

 

Saturated colors” are the pure color without adding black or white. The colors shown in the color wheel above are saturated colors. “Shades” are when you add black to the saturated color to get a darker result. “Tints” are when you add white to get a lighter color. Saturated colors tend to make your design feel brighter and more alive, and more masculine. Tints, i.e. pastels, tend to give a more feminine feel. Darker tints make it feel heavy.

 

Next week I’ll cover a bit about what each of the colors and color types communicates.

 

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