Design Principles: Colour Theory

Contrasts of colours

These are the different types of contrasts that we can can perceive in colour:

Contrast of tone: Juztaposition of light and dark things that tonally have less contrast.

Contrast of hue: Juxtaposition of diferent hues. The greater the distance between two hues, the higher the contrast.

Contrast of saturation: Juxtaposition of light and dark values and their relative saturation.

Contrast of extension: Formed by assigning proportional feild sizes in relation.

Contrast of temperature: Juxtapositioning hues that cannot be considered 'warm' and 'cool'.

Simultaneous contrast: Formed when boundaries between colours perceptually vibrate.

We were set the task to collect 4 different coloured objects and see how the contrast changes when we place them onto different coloured papers as seen below. To make this task easier, I have arranged the coloured paper in the order of the colour wheel. This should show that the contrast will change in direct proportion to where the colours are on the colour wheel.

By making the above photo black and white we can see the tonal value of each colour. As you can see below, the blue and red are the same and darkest in tonal value, the green and orange are slightly lighter, and the yellow is the lightest.

Red Bottle Cap

The red bottle cap is darker  and more saturate than the red paper. This contrast in tone and saturation causes the paper to look even lighter and less saturate. This happens more so because the colours are so close in hue. Both reds are warm colours, so there isn't much contrast of temperature.

The orange has slightly more contrast of hue than the red as it is further around the colour wheel than the red paper. There isn't as much contrast in tone as they are both fairly similar in tonal value.

The red and yellow are furthest apart tonally creating a contrast. The colours are both warm, but red is considerably warmer than yellow creating a bit of contrast in temperature.

Red and green are opposite on the colour wheel. This means there is contrast in hue. As stated before, the green and red paper are very similar in tonal value, but the red bottle cap is a darker than the red paper. This creates a slight contrast in tonal value. You can see the tonal difference below:

Red is a very warm colour whereas blue is very cool. This creates a contrast in temperature. Tonally, they are similar, but the bottle cap is more saturate. This causes the blue paper to look very dull and even less saturate.

Yellow Lemon

The lemon is very saturate, light. This contrasts with the dark, matte red, making the yellow look even more vibrant and the red even more matte. 

 As these colours are close in hue, there is a contrast in which the green is brought out of the lemon. I actually found that my camera got confused and changed the the yellow to a yellowy green as seen below.

The two yellows are very close in hue and tonally. The main contrast between these two yellows is the saturation. The lemon is more saturate as it is a coated yellow, whereas the paper is matte. 

There is a contrast in tone and slight contrast in hue.

Yellow and blue are far apart on the colour wheel. This causes a contrast in hue. The two colours also have a contrast in tone. The saturation of the yellow makes the blue look less vibrant.

Green Clip

Tonally these colours are similar. They are opposite on the colour wheel, creating a contrast in hue. The green clip is a very solid, saturate colour, making the red look quite bland. the colours also have a contrast in temperature. The green is very cool and the red is warm.

There is still a contrast in hue and temperature, but not as much as with red.

These colours are quite close tonally, This means that the yellow is causing the green clip to look slightly blue.

The main contrast here is a tonal contrast. The clip is clearly darker than the paper, but very similar in tone.

These colours are both very cool. The main contrast is saturation. The coated green clip stands out from the matte blue paper.

Orange Wrapper

These colours are both warm and close in hue and tone. The fact that there is a variety of tones on the wrapper makes in stand out slightly.

These colours are even closer in hue and tone. The wrapper is slightly more saturate than the paper, but apart from that there isn't much contrast.

There is a contrast of tone, and hue. The colours are both warm.

These colours are both tonally similar. There is a contrast in temperature as the green is very cool and the orange is warm.

Orange and blue are opposites on the colour wheel, making them complimentary colours. This means there is contrast in hue.

Pantone Color References

I used a set of Pantone Colour Swatches to identify as close as possible, the colour that my objects and paper are.

Pantone 201 EC

Pantone 107 EC

Pantone 355 M

Pantone 1525 M

There is a another handy way to identify a colour. I have previously used 'Adobe Kuler', which is an Iphone app that takes colours from a photo and makes an interesting colour scheme which you can change.

The app also gives you a HEX code for each colour.

Bellow is the the object colours (circles) on top of each of the paper colours:

They seem quite different when on a computer screen. i believe this is because we can get no sense of texture or material. The paper looks a lot darker and duller on here and the objects seem far brighter. The contrast of saturation was not as easy to see when comparing in real life, but it is much clearer here.