Wheely Confused
This week we carried on with the theme of design principles. Following last weeks lecture about layout, this week, we looked at colour schemes.
I found this lecture extremely valuable as the wrong colour scheme can make your work look completely amateurish no matter how long you have spent on all the other element of its design.
The way in which we approached the subject was to use the colour wheel, a principle that was deduced by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666 no less. It was quite surprising to learn that a design principle was discovered by someone of the science world.
We were advised that to make good use of colour in our work we should use a principle called ‘Colour Harmony’ the pr-defined colour harmonies or colour schemes we were told about were:
Analogous
Complementary
Split – Complementary
Near Complementary
Triadic ( I thought this was a type of Chinese gangster)
Tetradic
Polychromatic
Monochromatic
Neutral Colours
Discordant
Looking back at my work previous to the lecture I can see much of it falls into the last colour scheme, Polychromatic, which means that the colours have no discernable pattern. I think in the future I will now make sure that I consider the colours I use much more rather than randomly picking some ‘nice’ colours.
In the afternoon we were given the time to work on our projects which is always good news. I got the chance to catch up with the research I hadn’t finished in my personal study time. I had thought we were having a lecture from 11am to 4pm but it turned out I had just misunderstood that this was the position of the warm colours on the colour wheel.
I found this lecture extremely valuable as the wrong colour scheme can make your work look completely amateurish no matter how long you have spent on all the other element of its design.
The way in which we approached the subject was to use the colour wheel, a principle that was deduced by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666 no less. It was quite surprising to learn that a design principle was discovered by someone of the science world.
We were advised that to make good use of colour in our work we should use a principle called ‘Colour Harmony’ the pr-defined colour harmonies or colour schemes we were told about were:
Analogous
Complementary
Split – Complementary
Near Complementary
Triadic ( I thought this was a type of Chinese gangster)
Tetradic
Polychromatic
Monochromatic
Neutral Colours
Discordant
Looking back at my work previous to the lecture I can see much of it falls into the last colour scheme, Polychromatic, which means that the colours have no discernable pattern. I think in the future I will now make sure that I consider the colours I use much more rather than randomly picking some ‘nice’ colours.
In the afternoon we were given the time to work on our projects which is always good news. I got the chance to catch up with the research I hadn’t finished in my personal study time. I had thought we were having a lecture from 11am to 4pm but it turned out I had just misunderstood that this was the position of the warm colours on the colour wheel.
posted by DREW @ 6:37 PM
5 Comments:
Classic last paragraph, made me laugh out loud.
I'm still in shock by the fact that you didn't learn the colour wheel at university Drew. What exactly where they teaching you? As was said in lesson, it is slightly worrying what goes on at university.
I learnt some of the colour wheel in GCSE Art, but there were parts that were new to me. Although in the last assignment I tried to use the colour index book to choose similar colours (I went for 'earthy tones') Polychromatic could probably still be described as my colour scheme. At least I wasn't the only one though.
I too went to university and learned nothing about the colour wheel, P.A.R.C or anything like that.
I too think I have been short changed by an instituition thats meant to be the pinnicle of knowledge!
It's true that when Steve goes on about degree students doing the equivelent course that they don't have as much knowledge as a HNC/D'er.
It is quite a worrying trend that I'm seeing from people who's been to uni - they just don't learn much.
Makes you want to grab every chance that we're getting with two hands.
Can anyone suggest any other design principles that you would find helpful to learn about?
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