Summary of chapter 7 Use Color with Purpose

  The God said that there is the light first and then the whole world in the genesis of bible. Similarly, there is the light first and then the color. Color is not a natural or physical property of a material or an object, it “appears as a reaction to the light that shines upon an object and is reflected or transmitted to our eyes.” (page 140)

  “Color creates a mood, attract attention, and conveys meaning. It can add visual appeal, improve usability, and enable learning.” (page 135) So how to choose appropriate color to appeal viewers and simulating students’ positive reaction in learning is important.

  Although different people’ reaction to color may different because of culture, psychology, physiology, individual experience and past history, there are some common responses to colors for most people. Color preferences can convey positive or negative feelings that bright and simulating colors can excite or arousal people; dark colors can disappoint people or evoking some unhappy memories; neutral or serene colors can deliver a peaceful and relaxed feeling to people.

  In addition, color can motivate students’ learning process and evoke some positive emotions. For instance, use cool colors to decorate classroom in summer can help students calm down quickly and gather attention to study. Learning progress of students in low grades can be exactly promoted by providing colorful textbook and materials. And color is also valuable for enhancing storytelling that a red face can convey anger and black face can convey embarrassment or speechless feeling.

  But before we practice relative color utilization in design, we should get clear about necessary theories of color in the forefront.

  Hue, saturation and value are three visual properties of the color, and it also has a hidden psychological property, temperature. Hue is the pure version of a color such as red or black; saturation is the amount of gray added to a color, it can influence the intensity of a color; value is the brightness of a color which relates to darkness or lightness, tint or shade; and temperature reflects to the subjective feeling of a color that red or orange and adjacent colors indicate warm, blue or green and similar colors will convey a cold feeling to human.

  Beside color properties, there are some different color models for designers to choose as well. Red-green-blue or RGB model is usually used for displaying on screen which address hexadecimal codes to represent different colors for users to choose. CMYK model is for image printing and HSV reflects the three properties used to describe colors. And red-yellow-blue or RYB model is which we always used in normal life that it has primary, secondary and tertiary colors. Primary colors are red, yellow and blue which can’t be create by any other colors. Secondary colors are three colors mixed by each two primary colors and tertiary colors are six colors mixed by secondary colors and adjacent primary colors.

  Better understanding of these theories of color can help designers a lot on selecting proper and harmonious palette. But choosing a palette or color scheme for design is not easy to do because designers should make sure the palette they chose can authentically promote a positive experience, avoid causing eye fatigue, project the appropriate mood or personality and be appropriate for the audience and content. (page 144) And the most of all, their palette choosing must comfort people who have color vision deficiency because they are not so sensitive about the difference between various colors like normal people. Designers can use hyperlinks, keys and legends or text hint to try their best to help them to recognize and distinguish different colors, it’s necessary.

  For specific palette choosing, designers also need consider color harmonies and interactions.

  “Just as audio harmony sounds pleasant o our ears, color harmony is pleasing to the eyes.” (page 148) An easy way to reach for harmony is selecting three colors that are adjacent to each other, one as the dominant color and the other two as supplement. Designers can also choose complementary palette to augment contrast for a unique harmony. Colors are not seen in isolation that they can be affected be surrounding colors. So designers can choose surrounding colors with contrary value or saturation to highlight some significant or important color.