COLOR THEORY
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| Every color has three properties.
The Hue represents the color without regarding saturation or darkness, it distinguishes blue from red from yellow.
The Saturation refers to how saturated or pure the color is, the less saturated a color is the closer it approaches being a shade of grey.
The Lightness of a color does mean light vs. dark, but can be misleading. The colors of the rainbow are all at their maximum possible lightest shade, even though red or indigo seems darker than the yellow of a rainbow. The 'light' purple in the figure above, were you to make it closer to white and thereby 'lighter' you would do so by lowering the saturation of that purple, it is already at maximum lightness for the same saturation of color on the left center color dot.
The rest of this article is about juxtaposing two or more colors, I use bright colors to illustrate the color principles. Understand that a desaturated color will combine with other colors similarly to a saturated color, but the effect would be subdued. The same can be true for colors so dark the hue is obscured. A dark color is a natural contrast to a light color, but this is a function of light vs. dark , not color theory. |
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| If you are an artist, you may be more familiar with a 'color wheel'. This is the same idea presented as a linear progression. You can see each secondary color is a blend of the two primary colors on either side. I hope it's easy for people new to color theory to understand
What I'm presenting is classic 'additive' color model, which is a model that applies to paint and CMYK printing. Your computer monitor use RGB which is a subtractive model based on light (add Red Green and Blue together in light, you get pure white).
Know that the color ideas presented apply to both color models! Even though Magenta and Cyan = purple, but only in paint or CMYK. |
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| Here's the 'loudest' possible color combination, a color combined with it's 'opposite'.
What is an opposite color? Try this: stare at something with an intense color, fix your eyes on it for a good 3 minutes. Now look away to a white wall. What you see on the white wall is the 'opposite' color to the one you were staring at, it's something your eyes do to recover from the overload of the first color.
On a color wheel, the opposite color is literally opposite the color you select. Since I'm not presenting a color wheel, just understand that the color opposite any primary color, is the secondary color resulting from the combination of the other two primary colors.
Opposite color combinations have maximum 'shimmery' contrast (especially if both colors are brightly saturated), usually this is a BAD thing that may be labelled a 'LOUD' color combination. Exceptions are made for Christmas (red and green) and things like school colors and team colors where the color is less important than the idea of honoring the school or team.
Opposite or complementary colors do grab attention, and sometimes this may be more relevant than good taste. |
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So what do you do when you want a touch of color contrast, but want to keep the color tasteful? The SPLIT COMPLEMENT! This is a combination of a color with a color that is similar to it's complement, but is removed enough to give contrast without clashing. Split complements can be very attractive combinations, they are popular in comic books especially (green/purple is a split complement combination used by the HULK, Blue and Schoolbus yellow are X-man colors).
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Harmonious Colors are colors of related hues, they always look excellent, 'harmonious', in combination. If you prize the emotional impact of one specific hue of color, you can combine it with a harmonious color and maintain the overall color feeling you want while giving the design a taste of counterpoint and variety.
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| An excellent three color combination is two 'harmonious' colors juxtaposed with a split complement, for contrast. This is also a classic formula for web page and logo design.
I hope you have a better appreciation for how color works in combination. When you create original designs, a single color used well (for example, if the color matches a trim or is harmonious or a split complement to the color of the shirt you're printing on) can be more effective than a 'full color' image, or even one with 3 to 5 colors. In the interest of better design, often 'less is more'.
Always consider the color of shirt you're printing on, does the shirt have a color trim? Remember, use the shirt as part of your design, and the design will be better. |
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