OUGD404 - Colour Theory

We were asked to bring in 15-20 items of a single colour that was assigned beforehand. We then arranged these colours into a colour wheel.

The colour wheel allows us to see at a glance which colours are complementary (opposite each other on the wheel), analogous (adjacent to each other on the wheel), triadic (three colours positioned at 120 degrees on the wheel from each other) and so on.

Hue

This is the position on the colour wheel, and represents the base colour itself. This is typically referred to in degrees (around the colour wheel), so a yellow colour will appear between 50 and 60 degrees, with the perfect yellow appearing at 56 degrees.

Saturation

This is a representation of how saturated (or rich) a colour is. Low saturation results in less overall colour, eventually becoming a shade of grey when fully desaturated. Saturation is normally referred to as a percentage between 0 and 100%.





Simultaneous Contrast

Formed when boundaries between colours perceptually vibrate due to conflicting contrasts.

Translucent objects bring more colours into it because of the reflective surface. When seen in bright lights there will be more white colour on the reflective surface. When seen in dark it will be a different colour because the light reflection will no longer be visible.

Pantone Colour Swatches 

The pantone colour match system uses a standardises set of colours which is used for identifying specific colours. We used pantone colour match books to find the codes for the items in blue. We were asked to use them to find lightest, darkest, most blue, the most green and the most purple.

CMYK/Process – Digital printing

The CMYK, also known as Process colours are generally used in digital printing for signage. CMYK refers to the four colours used; Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black to generate a colour. It is these four colours which are mixed together to make up other colours, much the same principal to how paint is colour matched.

One thing to note is that CMYK colours may not look identical to physical colours due to the restriction to the number of colours CMYK can reproduce and that Inks perform differently. For example, orange is very hard to reproduce, and can look very muddy in when printed digitally. We take care to register all images with our four color bars applied to all printing we do. In this manner, the production crew can quickly and visually check the print at different stages. If a final color is not accurately made, there is little we can do. It is a technology thing.

The CMYK colour model defines colour using the following components:

C Cyan 

M Magenta
Y Yellow
K Black 

The cyan, magenta, yellow, and black components are the amounts of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink that a CMYK colour contains and are measured in percent from 0 to 100.

The CMYK colour model is a subtractive colour model. Subtractive colour models use reflected light to display colour. Printed materials are produced using the CMYK colour model. When you combine cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, so that the value of each component is 100, the result is black. When the value of each component is 0, the result is pure white.