Page 1 of 3 Part of our job as professional communicators is to work with color every single day, whether it is starting from scratch to create a unique logo and color scheme for a client, sending a multitude of colors from a website out to the world, or ensuring a Pantone color match is adhered to.
I love color and I thought it was time to discuss the basics of color for those of us who struggle with it, don't quite understand the basics, or are just stuck in a rut. As well, I luckily work with a print designer as my business partner, so I've come to learn about bringing the world of print and multimedia together and would like to share that with you on a basic level as well.
We often take color for granted. Color is the wonderful effect produced on the eye and its associated nerves when light waves of different wavelengths enter your eye. Light transmitted from an object to the eye stimulates the different color cones of the retina, thus making it possible to perceive the various colors of an object.
Once we perceive color, our brain is triggered, and a flood of emotions and memories fill our mind, whether we are conscious of this process or not. Orange and red make us feel peppy and active, and are thus used in children's settings and fast-food restaurants. Cool blues and greens are soothing and represent the sea and sky, and are suited very well to designs where we want calm to pervade. Neutrals make us feel, well, 'neutral' and help offset the color noise we often get on the web (flashing purple text on aqua background, anyone?).
In this first part of a three part series, let's go through the color basics.
Keywords
color, rgb, hexadecimal, design, pantone
