Colour Theory & Colour Schemes

What is colour theory?


In the visual arts, colour theory is a body of practical guidance to colour mixing and the visual effects of a specific colour combination.


Meanings of different colour theory:

•  complimentary - two colours that are opposite on the colour wheel
•  analogis - three colours that are all next to each other
•  triadic - colours with equal distance apart ( shaped like a triangle at the colour wheel)
•  rectangle - four colours put into complementary pairs
•  square - four colours evenly spaced out into a square shape; best used it you let one clour dominant
•  tetradic - a special variant of dual colour scheme, there is no clear dominance of colour
•  monochromatic - different shades of the same colour

Key words/meanings of colours:

where are they used and why

•  white - light, innocence, purity, safety, godness, fresh
•  grey - dull, moody, glamourous, graceful
•  purple - calm, luxury, royalty, peace, mobility, spirituality
•  black - sadness, authority, power, classy, chromatic
•  yellow - happiness, bright, energetic, creative
•  green - nature, calm, freshness, life, ambition, healing 
•  pink - femine, sweet, girly, cute, playful, healthy, happy, compassion
•  red - sensual, passionate, strong, dangerous, love
•  blue - loyalty, intelligence, faith, trust, trustworthy



HISTORY

Sir Isaac Newton (1706) developed from the concept of refraction (light separating when it hit the prism). Later on he developed this into the colour wheel (often refered to as the 'Hue Wheel')

Jonathan Wolfgang von Goethe (poet) 1810 wanted to explore the perception of colours

“When the eye sees a colour it is immediately excited and it is its nature, spontaneously and of necessity, at one to produce another, which with the original colour, comprehends the whole chromatic scale. '' - his quote

Why do we use colour theory?
It is important while creating stuff like for architects for example. What would they do if there was nothing about colours? They have to know which colours suits each other the most and which looks the best together. Some people can tell that kind off stuff without anything like colour theory just cos they are talented in a way, but I'm sure colour theory is such an important thing in this kind of situation 

Colours are also importsant in daily basis, sometimes we don't even realise when we use it. When we buy clothes, we buy them as we like and how we thing they match each other, when we buy stuff to home we also look how it will look like all together.

Colours are also so important in Logos and brands. That's basically the first thing that we look at. for example why does facebook has a blue logo? Blue colour makes us feel safe and calm so we don't really worry about stuff that we post there and it just basically makes us feel safe there.

Who are Pantone and what they do?
Pantone is a limited liability company headquartered in New Jersey. They match colours used in specyfing printing links. Colour of the year 2019 was Living coral. A lot of companies actually made prooducts in that colour like Apple. Their new iPhone is in colour red which is really similar to the coral one.

What are HEX codes?

Hex codes are the numbers of colour that you see while choosing one on for example photoshoop.
It helps you to remember the colour you used to keep you work nice and clean :)

Viewfinder app

In this app you basically take a picture and it shows what colours  you can see the most. It's very simple to use and it's very helpful while working at photoshop.

There is two different websites we've used to play around with colours.