Color theory

So this week, we learned about colors and how to use the science of colors (color theory) to choose colors and use them to convey meaning and emotion. To be honest I already knew a lot about colors, so I didn’t really learn a many new things. But still, I LOVE colors so I always welcome any chance to be creative with different colors and color schemes.

The human eye can discern between 10 million colors. But all colors are made up from the same colors, Red, Blue and Green. In graphic design, we mostly use two different color profiles, RGB and CMYK.

RGB

RGB is a colour mode that creates other colours by combining different quantities of red, green and blue. An RBG image consists of thousands of colors, so it is the best suited for the screen and almost everything except vector-based art and real life printing. The reason that RGB is the standard colour mode throughout most applications is that with RGB you can basically create any colour you like with great accuracy. Most photo-editing programs use RGB as the default color profile.

CMYK

CMYK is an acronym for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black). CMYK differently from RGB, and uses subtractive colours instead of RGB which uses «additive» types of colour. So all images using a CMYK-profile will only be able to show colors which can be created with these four colors. CMYK is a color system/scheme which was originally created for print. CMYK isn’t used as often these days as it did before, because many commercial printers are actually able to print in RGB. But CMYK is still used by most professional printing companies.

So our first task this week, was to go to Adobe color and create the following color schemes:

• Monochromatic
• Triadic
• Analogous
• Complementary

We were told to screenshot the different color schemes we made. Here are mine:

Monochromatic:

Triadic:

Analogous:

Complementary:

Next, we were tasked with taking a color photo and apply the following color profiles to the photo:

• Monochrome
• Duotone
• Split tone
• And lastly a color effect of our own choice

Here are my images. I chose a photo of the irish actor Michael Fassbender. Why? Well because he is HOT. No but seriously I am a massive movie buff, and I enjoy his acting. Being a celebrity, I could also easily find a professional photo of him online. Simple as that. So here is the original photo:

Monochrome:

Duotone:

For the personal effect, I went for a double color exposure, much like a faux old 3d-glasses effect.

Our next task was to create a book cover for one of three choices. The titles we could choose were Animal Farm by George Orwell, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett or Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin. I chose Animal Farm, because I have read the book and seen the animated movie so I felt I could more easily convey the content of the book visually than the other two options. So Animal Farm is a story about a farm were the animals are divided into different classes in a hierarchy. The story is an analogy of communist Soviet and the iron fist of the dictator Josef Stalin. The most obvious thing to do was to choose the color red, because it is so heavily used in soviet iconography. But the task asked for the use of analogous colors, so I instead opted for a dark blue, with the analogous colors being purple and green. These contrasting colors convey disagreement and discontent found in the novel. I didn’t want to use the classic masculine, industrial «soviet» typeface, si I went for a more quirky font, to tie in with the animal and farm aspect of the story. So it serves as a contrast to the story in that respect I guess, but the story is full of satire and irony, so I felt the typeface was fitting.

Here is the result:

The spiraling circles in the middle of the image is there to convey a a sense of unbalance and uncertainty. The pig is there to tie in with the story, but it is also there for readers that dont know anything about the novel or its premise. I wanted them to ask themselves why is there a pig smack in the center of the cover? Is the story about a pig? Why is the pig worn and full of holes? So yeah, that was the main reasoning behind it, to have a eye catching visual element as the focal point of the cover.