Color Who is color sensitive?? Did you know that color and visual elements activate the right brain (emotions), while the printed words activate the left brain (logic)? Color is powerful Color organizes Color creates visual impact • RED: aggressive; stimulating; sexy nature, assertive; attention; and provoking action; impossible to ignore. • PINK: Depending on its saturation or value, pink evokes varied mood swings. Magenta and fuchsia are perceived as sensual and theatrical. But water-down the red in lighter pinks and the raw sensuality of red is replaced with gentle romanticism. • ORANGE: Inheriting some of the drama of red, orange is tempered by the friendly humour of yellow. Stimulates the appetite and radiates with warmth and vitality. • YELLOW: Yellow and black is the most unignorable color combination in nature – tigers, stinging bees – it’s the color that says: you’d better pay attention to me. • BROWN: Rustic, durable, wholesome and deliciously rich are just some of the traits of the color that’s often associated with earth and home, substance and stability. • BLUE: Ever noticed how many corporations and financial institutions use blue in their brands? That’s because blue is seen as dependable and committed. It is also the color we often associate with calm and serenity. Darken the blue and you’ll add an instant authority, credibility and power to it. • GREEN: Because of its association with nature and foliage, green in design can be used almost like a neutral color: greens never clash with red or pink roses, yellow sunflowers, lilacs or bluebells. • PURPLE: It’s perhaps the most enigmatic and complex color, with the range of meanings – from royal to elegant to spiritual to mysterious. Purple is often favoured by very creative and eccentric people who are not afraid of appearing daring. • WHITE: Not surprisingly white communicates purity, sense of clarity and simplicity. White is also perceived by the human eye as a bright color, that’s why it works so well in contrast with all other colors. • BLACK: People see black as the most dramatic, heavy, powerful, classic color with an up-scale look. Because of its extreme contrast to white, black and white is the quintessential combination of depth and clarity, power and innocence. “The eye will follow color around your composition like a dog follows the cook in the kitchen” Color has cultural or symbolic meaning Orange and black Purple and gold Red and white Red and green Blue and white (anyone??) Red and yellow (McDonalds Retro color (ex. In the textbook) Turquoise, Pink, Black 3 main color languages: CMYK RGB Pantone (sometimes called PMS) Pantone, the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries. In September 1963, Lawrence Herbert, Pantone's founder, created a unique system for identifying, matching and communicating colors to solve the problems associated with producing accurate color matches in the graphic arts community. Pantone has a particular number specifying its ink formula. His insight that the spectrum is seen and interpreted differently by each individual led to the innovation of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM. http://www.pantone.com/popups/medialounge/medialounge.aspx?pid=999& type=3 Today, the PANTONE Name is known throughout the world and across a range of industries as the standard language for accurate color communication, from designer to manufacturer to retailer to customer. Book of Pantone chips: http://www.pantone.com/pages/products/product.aspx?pid=999&ca=1 Mother Nature Mother nature is a good source for color pairing. SOURCE: http://creativecurio.com/2007/09/natures-color-palette/ Nature provides some of the most striking and beautiful color palettes imaginable! You don’t have to look far to find great inspiration. Flowers especially can give you such a varied and bright color scheme that you will never run out of ideas. I had so many flower pictures I wanted to share with you, but this is one of my favorites. Notice how the complimentary colors of green and red are present in nature. Red and yellow are two parts of the triad of primary colors (blue is the other one), too. Nature is, of course, a great source for an earthy color palette. This little bird provides us with a calm scheme of brown, green, and black. He let me get astonishingly close to him so I could take this photo! I only have a 4x zoom. He loved to pose, too! Have you ever seen a Rainbow Eucalyptus tree? They are amazing! You will hardly believe your eyes when you see this tree with bark of bright pinks, purples, blues and greens. I took this picture (and the two above) at the Hawai’i National Botanical Garden in Kaua’i. Now we plunge under the depths of the Solomon Islands. This little critter is called a nudibranch (pronounce the ‘ch’ as ‘k’). These little guys come in all sorts of brilliant colors and crazy shapes! Some look like leopards, others are charcoal with black spots and others have funny little tufts and dusters along their backs (which is actually how they breathe!). Our friend here and his surroundings provide us with a beautiful palette of greens, purples, maroon and orange, which could be effectively used to highlight a particular element in a layout. You’ll want to choose a variety of colors for your scheme. Some colors can be similar to each other to create unity (pastel purple and violet for example), others can be complimentary (purple and yellow, range and blue, green and red) and at least one color should stand out from the rest so you can use it to draw attention to a particular section or element. These feather dusters offer a wide variety of hues, but they all work well together. Many designs I’ve seen recently have been very brightly colored. I can think of several menus–especially drink menus–that are full of these types of colors. If you are not a diver, you should be! Look at all the beautiful, amazing and colorful life under the sea (I can just hear Sebastian singing about it). The parrotfish is one of my favorites because he is so vibrant! Can you believe colors like these pinks and aquas can show up in nature? What a great palette for a travel poster, huh? Color is light. Color is atoms within an object or surface that bounce off light in different ways. Ultra violet light (dangerous) Ultra red light Color Wheel Christmas, kings and blue jeans The color wheel is like an analog clock with three primary colors Form any triangle four hours apart on the color wheel to locate a viable color scheme palette. LOOKING AT COLOR! DOWNLOAD ONE OF THE FOLLOWING: Color Theory http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/reference/colortheory.html (download), Color Schemer (http://www.colorschemer.com/download.php also Color Burn http://www.firewheeldesign.com/widgets/ (download) According to color theory, a good combination is one that uses: • two colors opposite each other on the color wheel (Complimentary), • three colors equally spaced around the color wheel (Triadic), or • two pairs of colors (a total of four) opposite each other. (Four Tone) 1. Opposite/Complimentary colors: Complementary colors are easy to pick out; they are hues that are directly across from each other on the color wheel. RED + GREEN: • one of the more difficult combinations to work with because it tends to remind everyone of Christmas. This is also a combination that is difficult for those with certain types of color blindness. To get away from the connotations with Christmas, try a darker shade of one color and a lighter tint of the other. Or use tints of both. This can have a very fresh, new feeling YELLOW AND PURPLE: For a richer twist, try making the yellow more of a gold. BLUE AND ORANGE: A very bold combination. • Any color that is directly across from another on the color wheel is a complementary color. Notice how each cool color—blue, purple, green—has a corresponding, complementary warm color—yellow, red, orange. 2. Triadic colors (red, blue, and yellow) make a bold statement in any decor. Coincide with children’s items (take a look at kids’ games, cartoons and toys)./ Secondary colors (green, orange, and purple) can be engaging, but they sometimes need to be shaded to work together. Tertiary colors (blue-green, yellow-green, red-orange) can combine for a very sophisticated look. 3. Split Complementary These are different than triads, although they, too, have three colors. For a split complementary, you take the two colors on either side of the color wheel from the direct complementary. • TRY Green, Red-Orange and Red-Purple: The direct complementary of green is red, but on either side of red we have red-orange and red-purple. A split complementary is half way between a full complementary and a triad. • TRY Orange, Blue-Purple and Blue-Green You don’t always have to have a primary color in your palette! 4. Double Complementary/Four Tone Be careful with choosing a double complementary color palette because too many colors can overwhelm the eye. Used strategically, though, this can be very effective. • TRY: Red, Green, Yellow and Purple Isn’t it interesting to observe that you can’t have a double complementary with all of the primary colors? The complementary of a primary is a secondary color. • TRY Yellow-Orange, Blue-Purple, Blue-Green and Red-Orange Notice how this is similar in its base colors to the double complementary we tried above, but has a different mood. 5. Monochromatic A monochromatic -- or one-color -- scheme can be interesting if you use several shades of the same color.