Design Principles - Visual Literacy - Colour Theory

Design Principles 

Visual Literacy, Colour Theory - 28/10/14

For this session I we were split up into tables and each table were required to bring in 5 objects of a particular colour, My tables colour was yellow so I brought a; lemon, sponge,  keyring, Lid and marker pen which were all different shades of yellow. 

Our first task was to combine our tables items and list them from darkest to lightest, this was our result; 

Lightest - Darkest

Next we were tasked to split our items into two piles, one pile that contained of which the colour contained more Red and the other of which the object contained more blue. This was more difficult as it was based on peoples perception so took longer to reach a group decision however we were all happy with the outcome (seen below)

Blue (left) Red (right)

After this my group moved to the table comprised of blue object and were asked to make a circle in demonstrating the progressive colour change. We also found this task difficult as the turquoise coloured objects initially did not work where we had placed them, this resulted in the group rearranging the whole circle until we felt the colours progressively changed. 

Progressive colour change

The group was then asked to perform a similar task in which we had to add two items from another groups table into our own coloured circle, I feel our group worked well in this task as we had to incorporate two red items into our yellow circle. We worked systematically and worked out the best place for each item to fit into our circle. 

Adding Red to our circle

After a short break we gathered outside on the balcony and were told to extend the previous task by combining every groups colours together in order to make one progressive colour wheel, each group laid their items out from and the next group followed on from this until we had created a circle the graduated from blue to red to yellow. 

Finally we were introduced to the Pantone colour sets which matches colours so they can be used across a range of disciplines and always produce the say outcome for example using print and paint will result in the exact same colour if Pantone matching is used. For our final task we were given the pantone swatches as had to colour match as many of our objects as possible in the most accurate form this was confusing at first as the subtle differences between coated and uncoated colours meant I had to be extremely accurate when matching colours. After this we swapped tables and rematched another groups to make sure they had matched their items to the Pantone system correctly. I found this session interesting as it allowed me to see the practical application of the Pantone system as opposed to just having been shown it in Photoshop or other digital software.