Kalila Snow Jan: Basic Colour Understanding

What is Colour?

Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, blue, yellow, green and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light power versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects or materials based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra. By defining a color space, colors can be identified numerically by their coordinates.

The science of color is sometimes called chromatics, chromatography, colorimetry, or simply color science. It includes the perception of color by the human eye and brain, the origin of color in materials, color theory in art, and the physics of electromagnetic radiation in the visible range (that is, what we commonly refer to simply as light).

Color in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in someone else. Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background. Color theory is a science in itself. Studying how colors affect different people, either individually or as a group, is something some people build their careers on. And there’s a lot to it. Something as simple as changing the exact hue or saturation of a color can evoke a completely different feeling. Cultural differences mean that something that’s happy and uplifting in one country can be depressing in another.

What is Colour Harmony?

Color harmony is to create relationships between colours, when we look at multiple colours, we organise them to make them look pleasing to the eye. When putting lots of random colours together, we create chaos instead of orders. Colour harmony creates relationships between all the colours to make them easier to look at. Colour harmony is important for designers, photographers, illustrators, videographers, filmmakers, artists etc.

What is Mixed Colour?
Every colour has zillion of brothers and sisters, when there is a base colour, there will be pure colour, grey, black and white. Every colour has zillion of cousins as well when you add an amount of other colours. The variations of these mixed colour difference are almost endless. A good colour harmony uses mixed colour and there are lots to choose from; and mixed colour is always more interesting than pure colour.

Types of Harmony
Harmonies always start with a base colour, this base is a mixed colour, it is not a pure colour. The members of the harmonies always shine brighter than the rest of the palette, the rest colour members are called Supporting Cast Members. Designers will often associate keywords to describe their colour harmonies, the danger is that what means one thing to you means another to someone else. Colour combinations can have multiple meanings to everyone, sometimes they are completely surprising meanings; keywords are very subjective, if you use them, use with caution. When we design, we should consider how our harmonies will be used, so that it will help to determine the colours you add.

Complementary

Complementary harmony is the opposite colour of the base colour on the colour wheel, and this type of harmony is called "complementary"

Split Complementary

Split complementary harmony is the two colours next to or on the left or right side of the actual complementary harmony of the base colour on the colour wheel, and this type of harmony is called "split complementary"

Triad

Triad harmony is three colours evenly spaced 120 degree around the colour wheel, and this type of harmony is called "triad"

Tetrad

Tetrad harmony is four colours evenly spaced 90 degree around the colour wheel, and this type of harmony is called "tetrad"

Analogous

Analogous harmony is the similar colours of the base colour on the colour wheel, these colours are neighbours on the colour wheel, think of them as being in the same area code.