Choosing the colour of your design could be an easy or a tricky part of your work. It’s true that colour is the first thing that actually ‘speaks’ to the human brain, the first visual signal, so yes… it is important. Colour makes us feel something as soon as we perceive it! Choosing colour can be a conscious process! Take it as an opportunity of coming closer to yourself and observe your needs! Assess the appropriateness and the practicality for your intended use and also think of the visual impact you wish to create.
Colors have certain symbolisms…
For example if you wish to design a backpack that looks really fresh and preppy, you could go for white, any whitish option or any pastel colour. White, amongst other things, symbolizes purity, cleanness, freshness. One thing you should consider if you actually proceed with white, is how you would incorporate it into your creation, what accessories you may use and other details, so that you avoid making something too clean, too sterilized, like a hospital white for example. Likewise, if you wish to design a more playful and vibrant backpack, one of the colours you could choose, is green, which symbolizes new life, birth and blooming. Think that the color preferred from ancient times through Middle Ages for the bride’s wedding dress was green, the colour of Venus for the ancients, the colour of nature and of fertility; we even meet a painting that depicts a pregnant bride in a green gown for the same reason. Accordingly, all colours have their own ‘voice’ and it’s worth thinking of those possible perceived symbolism before you make up your mind.
The Arnolfini Wedding, The Arnolfini Marriage, the Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his Wife, is a 1434 oil painting on oak panel by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck.
The range of colours is huge and there is much more to it. Each colour’s ‘voice’ is also affected by its value, its tone. For example, if you wish to have your backpack’s shoulder straps in yellow, there is definitely a big difference between the vibrant yellow of the sun and the muted yellow of the dust. The feeling triggered by these two options is a completely different story!
Colours and suitability!
Besides the psychology, comes of course also the practicality factor. If for example you made that backpack in white, then surely you would need to wash it quite often. On the other hand, if that was your choice, then you could think of a raw material, that you could easily wipe off with a wet piece of cloth and maintain it reasonably clean with not that much of an effort. Season also plays a role when choosing between your colours. Lighter or vibrant shades, are usually more appropriate for the summer, while darker ones are for winter. There are also cooler and warmer casts and so on.
Keep remnants of colours
Try to keep a record of colors you identify anywhere… from flowers, from images that come along, really from anywhere and anything. Keep your mobile handy and take a shot of whatever triggered your imagination, like i did at Aeropagitou Street underneath Acropolis, when i saw that beautiful ready to be eaten lollilop! As soon as I got home, I searched on the web how to DIY a lollipop my self, and I found this really good DIY link on Lollipop.
Colour Wheel
Everybody draws a color wheelColor Wheel is a circular shaped chart that is divided equal... More differently, the other way round, or upside down, but every wheel contains the same truths and principles. In one half of the wheel we find the warm colors, while on the other half, there are all the cool colors. This is proved by studying yellow and violet, which are the turning points. Is this yellow slightly orange, or is it slightly lemon? Is this violet getting blue or getting red? When the samples are neither warm nor cool they are the exact turning points that determine the division between cool and warm pigments.
the Theory of Colors
Goethe, in the Theory of Colors, writes about the opposites of the color wheel when he explains that the human eye has an almost moral yearning for completeness and harmony: “To experience completeness, to satisfy itself, the eye seeks… to produce the complementary hue… in this resides the fundamental law of all harmony of colors…” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe) 🙂 I really wosh to thank Brain Pickings for all the precious feedback and mindfully presented info! I really believe that it really worth’s donating-loving brain picking!
For an intro on colour symbolism I definitely recommend to have a look on this article of Christina Wang, a content marketer, writer, and editor:-)
There is plenty of information that can be found in books and various sources … It really worth’s getting into colour and it’s dynamics and do not just stay in theories…get your hands on it…experiment, mix colours…go for colour harmonies and for colour explosions!
Choose your colours mindfully and make them work for you!
Check out more thinking tools for approaching creations mindfully and effectively 🙂
http://wakeupcut.com/en/the-tools-2/