Taz's Blog Matrix: March 2011

Hi Chris

Here is LA7.

Cheers
Paul

Introduction to Design Fundamentals: Colour

Answer these short questions to demonstrate your understanding of colour theory and use. Use MS Word. Name it, date it and save into your account, then email it to your teacher for feedback.

Your client whose Sydney-based business is import/export of training textbooks in the engineering field needs a new business identity/ brand. What could you suggest would be the colour scheme for this client for their website? Explain why you chose these colours.

I would suggest blue, orange and a middle class grey. I chose these because they can represent a particular part of their business. Grey would represent the steel, orange will represent the safety within the business and the blue would represent the cleanliness and efficiency of their work.

Your client whose business is producing rugged outdoor footwear for the domestic (Australian) market needs a new corporate identity. Their product line is chiefly aimed at teens to mature adult. What could you suggest would be the colour scheme? Explain why you chose these colours.

I would choose a dark colour, like black, brown or even a dark shade of grey. I choose these colours to work in relation to a person’s mind. The last thing a person wants to do is clean their shoes, so if the shoes are a dark colour, then they won’t see much of whatever they’ve picked up in the forest or desert. They won’t be consciously spending time trying to get rid of something that makes their shoes look dirty.

A client who runs a govt. sponsored agency to support drug rehabilitation services needs a new corporate identity. What could you suggest would be the colour scheme for this client? Explain why you chose these colours.

Again I would choose colours that could represent something. In this case I would choose red, green and blue. Red to represent the stopping of a person using drugs, green to represent the drug user to keep going with their life, drug free and the blue to represent the sky, which represent their drug free future.

How many colours can be represented by a 24-bit RGB display system ? Why is it the most popular setting for computer displays?

24-bit rgb display systems are represented by 3 base colours, red green and blue each of these have 256 shades, however there are a total of 16,777,216 colours. In some graphic cards, the so-called 32 bit per pixel display graphic mode is identical in precision to the 24 bit per pixel mode; there are still only eight bits per component, and the eight extra bits are often not used at all.

How many colours can be represented by the Pantone CMYK process for print?

There are 1,114 spot colours in the Pantone CYMK chart.

Draw a diagram representing the rgb gamut (label the axes). Take a digital photo or scan it in and embed it into your document.

On the same diagram draw a superimposed cmyk gamut. What does this diagram suggest about the limitations of the cmyk colour model for screen-based (multimedia) design?

What does this mean when a client needs their traditionally print-based corporate logo carried-over to the web?

They would like the colours converted from CYMK to web colours.

When developing for DVD (Standard definition, PAL TV) what are “safe colours”? What happens to artwork that uses colours on PAL TV that aren’t safe? What’s a good rule-of-thumb for choosing “safe” colours.

The range of colours for a television is not as many as for that of a computer. The amount of colours for a television is limited, there are too many colours ofr it to handle. This is not the case for a computer.

Rules of thumb refers to specifying safe colours.

Check the photoshop utility ‘PAL safe’.

Try not to use pure colours. They are colours with a non-zero value.

Only select RGB colours that are below 20% of the maximum colour.

List 3 free-to-use online software tools to help you develop colour schemes. List their URLs and briefly describe how they work.

http://colorschemedesigner.com/

You are given the options of mono, complement, triad, tetrad, analogic and accented analogic, then you can you the colour wheel provided to choose your own colour schemes. Hovering over the colours gives you their hex code.

http://www.allprofitallfree.com/color-wheel.html

This site has a simple hover technique. You hover over a colour and the area around the colour grid lights up that colour and you are also given the hex code.

http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp

The colour wizard lets you submit your own base colour, and it automatically returns matching colours for the one you selected.

The BAM (Before & After Magazine) colour wheel is based on which colour wheel?

The wheel is based Johannes Itten’s 12-step colour wheel.

According to “Western” perception of colours, describe the emotion associated with the following colours and provide an example of its use in contemporary culture.

Colour emotion example

Red warmth fire

Blue cold water

White peace dove

Black sadness death

Yellow fun sand

Dark Green eerie dark forest

Lime-green relaxed tropical

Chrome strong metal

Orange cautious potential danger

Pink cute girly girl

Grey bored B&W TV

Purple vibrant neon light

Brown grounded earth

What’s the meaning of the following colour terms:

Hue

Hue is one of the main properties of colour, defined technically as “the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue and yellow. The other main correctives of colour appearance are colourfulness, chroma, saturation, lightness and brightness.

Lightness

Lightness is a property of a colour, or a dimension of a colour space, that is defined in a way to reflect the subjective brightness perception of a colour for humans along a lightness-darkness axis. A colour’s lightness also corresponds to its amplitude.

Saturation

Saturation is one of three coordinates in the HSL and HSV colour spaces. Note that virtually all computer software implementing these spaces use a very rough approximation to calculate the value they call “saturation”, such as the formula described for HSV and this value has little, if anything, to do with the description.

Tint

In colour theory, a tint is the mixture of a colour with white, which increases the lightness.

Shade

In colour theory, a shade is the mixture of a colour with black, which reduces the lightness.

Tone

Tone is also be called value or lightness. See lightness.

Gamut

In colour reproduction, including computer graphics and photography, the gamut, or colour gamut, is certain complete subset of colours. The most common usage refers to the subset of colours which can be accurately represented in a given circumstance, such as within a given colour space or by a certain output device.

Warm colours

Warm colours are usually any colour that refers to any kind of warm feeling. These colours can include red, orange and yellow.

Colour temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography, videography, publishing, manufacturing, astrophysics and other fields.

Cool colours

Cool colours are usually any colour that refers to any kind of warm feeling. These colours can include blue, green and cyan.

Colour temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography, videography, publishing, manufacturing, astrophysics and other fields.

Gradient

In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar field which points in the direction of the greatest rate of increase of the scalar field, and whose magnitude is the greatest rate of change.

Primary colours

Primary colours are sets of colours that can be combined to make a useful range of colours. For human applications, three primary colours are usually used, since human colour vision is trichromatic. These colours are blue, yellow and red.

Secondary colours

A secondary colour is a colour made by mixing two primary colours in a given space. Examples include: purple (blue + red), orange (red + yellow) and green (blue + yellow). CMYK mixture are slightly different.

Tertiary colours

A tertiary colour is a colour made by mixing one primary colour with one secondary colour, in a given colour space such as RGB or RYB. Unlike primary and secondary colours, these are not represented by on firmly established name each, but the following examples include some typical names. Brown and grey are sometimes known as tertiary colours and can be made by mixing complementary colours.

Cyan + blue = azure

Blue + magenta = violet

Magenta + red = rose

Red + yellow = orange

Yellow + green = chartreuse

Green + cyan = spring green

Chris Adams 2011