Design Principles: Colour Theory

In design principles we discussed colour theoretically and physically.

We spoke briefly about the existence of colour without someone to perceive it. Colour is simply light bouncing off of object and going into our eyes. 

We also discussed how colours can effect legibility of text and how a colour can look as though it has changed when surrounded by, other colours as seen below.

We then discussed how white light is made up of all the colours. As shown below, you can see how light can be refracted with glass to reveal the colours. 

We discussed how we interpret colours with our eyes.The colours we perceive are known as additive colours, as altogether they make up the colour white, whereas a subjective colour wheel is one that would make black.

Our eyes have rods and cones. The Rods allow us to see black and grey colours while the cones allow the brain to perceive colour.

There are three types of cones:

• Type one is sensitive to red orange light
• Type two is sensitive to green light
• Type three is sensitive to blue violet light

The human eye can only see three colours: Red, Green and Blue (RGB). Bellow is a video that explains this very well.

Below is a RBY colour wheel which is how we mix things in real life, like paint. Red, Blue and Yellow are the primary colours to this wheel. The secondary and tertiary are made up from the the primary and secondary colours.

The Pantone Matching System is the standard in the design industry for matching colours. This makes it easy to send information in-between people and sustain the correct information (colour). The pantone system can help designers find a colour that works in CMYK, which is the colour mode used by printers.

We each brought in objects that were the colours from the colour wheel and arranged them around the tables accordingly