Graphic Design - Color 2

The Color Wheel.

The color wheel you will use was first popularized by Johannes Itten, a teacher at the Bauhaus school of design in Germany. When Itten began teaching the elementary color theory course at the Bauhaus, he began looking at variant color wheels that other artists and theorists had developed. Itten found fault in just about every color wheel that he observed. Many of them were overly complex, some with well over a hundred colors (a level of complexity that made them rigid, redundant, and hard to teach). Other color wheels were too simple, some with only three to six colors (a level of simplicity that left out a number of important relationships and therefore made them useless as teaching tools). In an attempt to rectify these problems, Itten redesigned the color wheel once again and set the total number of colors at twelve: three primary colors, three secondary colors, and six tertiary colors. The resulting color wheel is pictured below.

Original Itten color wheel

By restricting the color wheel to 12 colors, he made it easy to visualize through eliminating dozens of redundant colors. This level of simplicity meant that his color wheel was extremely flexible and contained enough colors that you could easily determine the placement of hues omitted from the wheel.

Subtractive Color Wheel

Because Itten was a painter, his original color wheel was based on the principles of subtractive color mixing. Unfortunately, Itten made the mistake of using red, yellow, and blue as his primary colors despite the fact that cyan, magenta, and yellow were the primary colors of subtractive mixing.

In the figure below, Itten's color wheel has been adjusted so that it uses the proper subtractive primaries of cyan, magenta, and yellow. Although the overall effect is quite similar, there are several noticeable differences. The blue and violet ranges of the corrected color wheel are far more prominent, whereas yellow and orange are far less prominent. Itten's subtractive color wheel is more balanced and aesthetically pleasing, but the corrected subtractive color wheel gives you a better idea of how colors can be mixed.

Corrected Itten color wheel

Additive Color Wheel

There are few color wheels today that demonstrate the principles of additive color mixing. This is unfortunate because the expanding boundaries of digital and electronic media make using such a wheel more important than ever. The additive color wheel bears a superficial resemblance to the subtractive color wheel, but the balance of colors is quite different. It tends to favor blues and greens, whereas yellows and reds are reduced.

Additive color wheel.

Simple Color Schemes

Now that you have developed a good vocabulary for talking about color, it's time to learn about color schemes and how to put them into effect. It should be stressed, however, that using color schemes straight from this website is generally not a good idea. Digest the lessons from this chapter before putting any of these color schemes into effect.

Monochromatic Color Scheme The simplest of all color schemes is the monochromatic color scheme. As the name suggests, monochromatic color schemes use a single pure hue. Using a number of tints and shades of the hue provides the variety. Thus, a monochromatic color scheme based on red may include pure red, brick red (a shade of red), strawberry (a mild tint of red), and pink (an extreme tint of red).

Monochromatic color schemes tend to be extremely unified and harmonious, and are also effective for establishing an overall moodprovided you can establish the mood with only a single color. At times monochromatic color schemes can be dull because of the lack of variation and therefore can lose the interest of viewers.

"As the term mono means single, this term refers to a single color and all its saturation values. Let's take a yellow for example, the colors that are included with this yellow are white (0% saturation), light yellow (10-30% saturation) and so forth. These color produce a very consistent look, but can cleverly be used in various saturations to produce a nice effect. Similar to the Monochrome color scheme, it is not recommended to use a single color for advertising purposes, as it does lack in that department. Of course it is rare for a company to only use one color, so often you can combine this scheme with a solid black to achieve many various effects and looks that can be used in logos, company newsletters and stationary." From an article on the American Design Award website, 3/2003, by Brenda Perkins.

Triadic Color Scheme A triadic color scheme uses three different colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel. The most effective triadic color scheme consists of the three primary colors. The extreme contrast among these three colors has immense visual impact. You can create other triadic color schemes with secondary and tertiary colors although, in general, these triads are much more difficult to work with than the primary triad because the contrast between the colors tends to be somewhat less powerful.

Triadic color schemes have the advantage of being extremely stable because each color balances perfectly with the other two colors. This arrangement also lends the triadic color scheme a simple dynamism because one color leads into the next in a simplistic, natural progression. The bold nature of the colors involved makes the triadic color scheme vibrant and useful for presenting information in bold, decisive patterns. At times, however, this vibrancy may make triadic color schemes too garish and unsettling to convey information successfully.

Analogous Color Scheme Another simple color scheme is the analogous color scheme, which uses two or three colors next to each other on the color wheel (red, redviolet, and magenta, for example). The sheer number of possible combinations makes the analogous color scheme a in many cases, even more eyecatching than color schemes that use the primary triad. This also ensures that complementary color schemes are seldom dull. The extremely limited number of colors in complementary schemes, however, means that they are easily digested and then discarded by the viewer.

Split Complementary Color Scheme A variation on the complementary color scheme is the split complementary color scheme, wherein one of the complements is broken into the two colors that are adjacent to it. A red-cyan complementary color scheme, for example, could be turned into a composition that uses red, light blue, and seagreen.

The advantage of the split complementary color scheme is that it has more variety than a simple complementary color scheme. This variety, however, also makes split complementary color schemes less vibrant and eyecatching. To make matters worse, it is often hard to harmonize the colors in a split complementary color scheme.

Double Split Complementary Color Scheme As the name implies, the double split complementary color scheme is yet another variation of the complementary color scheme. Instead of merely splitting up one of the complements into the two colors next to it, both complements arc split.

The big advantage of the double split complementary color scheme is that it is even more varied than the split complementary color scheme. This is also a downfall because it is even less vibrant than the split complementary scheme and is even harder to harmonize.

Warm Color Scheme The hues of magenta, red, orange, yellow, and yellowgreen are generally referred to as the warm colors. These colors produce a synaesthetic experience of heat in most viewers. Studies have been conducted in which test subjects were placed in rooms painted in a warm color and their perceptions of the room's temperature was almost always much warmer than its actual temperature. The warmth that these colors radiate tends to make them seem warm, cozy, and inviting and they draw attention very easily. Psychologically warm colors are associated with happiness and comfort.

Completely warm color schemes have the advantage of being pleasantly inviting and inherently harmonious. Warm color schemes with no variety, however, have the disadvantage of being tremendously dull with no inherent eyecatching color combinations.

Cool Color Scheme The hues of violet, blue, light blue, cyan, and sea green are generally referred to as the cool colors. As with the warm colors, the cool colors can shift your perception of temperature although they tend to make you feel colder instead of warmer. Compositions that use the cool colors often seem slick and professional, but the coldness these colors radiate often turns people off. Psychologically, cool colors are associated with sadness, depression, and melancholia.

Completely cool color schemes have the advantage of being extremely harmonious and professional-looking. Just as with warm color schemes, however, cold color schemes with no variety are often dull.

There are two colors not classified as warm or cool: purple and pure green. These two colors don't fit easily into the cold/ warm classification. They seem to take on properties of warmth or coolness based on the context in which they've been placed. Use these two colors with great care in your warm and cool compositions.