Luis Gonzalez, the senior brand designer at In Vision, has a challenge for you: Think about red. What images come to your mind when you think about red? Feelings like anger, passion, and energy may rise to the surface. You may have visions of blushed cheeks, cherry lipstick shades, stop signs, blood, or a floating heart.
Although those may not have been the thoughts and feelings that red evoked for you, you likely associate the colour with certain emotions and ideas. This universal human experience isn’t just for designers. Knowing that colour choices go beyond personal preferences can help improve a product’s usability and even impact your users psychologically.
To unleash the power and beauty of colour, it is essential to understand colour theory, the wheel of colours, how complementary colours can be used to create impactful colour schemes, and the psychological effects of these colours. Here’s how you can get started, whether you are new to the topic or need to refresh your memory.
Understanding colour theory
Designers can use colour theory to help them determine what colours go well together. The science behind colour theory makes it more than just an “eyeing” combination of colours.
The colour wheel is at the core of the colour theory. It was created by Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century. Newton is best known for his breakthroughs in physics. He mapped the spectrum of colours into a circle.
A colour wheel is a tool that artists and designers can use to find harmonious combinations of colours based on the geometric relations represented on it. A triadic colour scheme, which has three colours evenly spaced on the wheel, will result in a bold combination. A tetradic scheme, which has four colours equally spaced on the colour wheel and can be used if you want to use a dominant colour with supporting colours, is another option.
Gonzalez says designers who want to play with color can use color picker extensions or color palette generators such as Muzli’s.
He says, “My greatest recommendation would be to go back to basics and look at the color wheel.”
His favorite book? Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color is an art education book that breaks down complicated color theory principles.
Colour wheel
The colour wheel shows colours in a visual way. Hues are arranged according to wavelength. Colour wheels can be used to represent colour relationships geometrically and show the relationship between primary, secondary, and tertiary colours.
The primary colours of the traditional RYB colour wheel are red, yellow, and blue. Mixing primary colours can make secondary colours, such as orange, green, or purple. Orange is created by mixing red and yellow. The combination of yellow and blue makes green. Purple is made of red and blue. This is what you remember from elementary school.
Mixing secondary colours with primary colours creates Tertiary colours.
There are many variations of the colour wheel, but most that involve these three types of relationships show at least a dozen colours.
Modern colour theory
An RGB colour model is a system that allows you to mix blue, green, and red colours. This may be more familiar to digital designers. Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow Black (or CMYK) are the four primary colours used in print images. They can be mixed to make them darker, but subtractive colours will get darker.
Principles and colour theory
The most basic colour theory concept was probably introduced to you in elementary school when you were given a set of primary colours to use as a paint palette. The primary colours are red, blue, yellow, and green. They can’t be mixed together. Brown is possible when you mix them all. Mix them together, and you can make all kinds of colours.
The colour theory refers to a colour’s lightness or darkness or colour values. To change a colour’s hue, you can add white to tint it. This will give you lighter, pastel colours and black to shade it. It creates a tone when grey is added to a primary or secondary colour. A toned-down colour will reduce its intensity and brightness.
You can expand your colour palette by adding tints, shades, and tones.
Colour theory is also about how colours are arranged together to create schemes. A monochromatic scheme, for example, is one that uses one colour but has many shades and tints. An analogous colour scheme uses colours from the wheel’s neighbouring colours, such as red, orange, and yellow.
Complementary colours
You can create harmony by choosing complementary colours when you pair colours. In this instance, opposites attract. This particular colour scheme uses two colours from the opposite side. This creates a bright, high-contrast combination that really pops.
You can find examples of complementary colours here: red and green, yellow and purple, orange and blue, and green and magenta. This is why complementary colour combinations are often bold.
Split complementary colour schemes allow you to add a third colour and make the scheme more subtle. This uses one colour as the base and two adjacent colours as its complement.
Other considerations for colour theory
Let’s now look at how designers can use colour theory in order to enhance their projects. Consider the last time you completed a contact form on a website. If you miss a field, a red error message will likely appear. If you are able to enter a password again for verification and everything is correct, you will see a green message indicating that you can proceed. This is because color not only communicates how you use your product but also uses psychology to elicit emotional responses (red = bad, green = good).
Red and green aren’t the only colors that have psychological power. The color wheel can be divided into warm and cold colours. Cooler colours, such as blue, are associated with calm and peace. Red and other warm colors are associated with passion and energy.
Color has an impact on the products. Research shows that people form a subconscious judgment about a product in 90 seconds. According to CCICOLOR, 62% to 90% are based on color alone. A 2011 study in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science showed that color is an important element in consumers’ perceptions of brands.
Research from the 1990s shows that males love bold colors, and females prefer soft colors.