Miao's blog: February 2010

Monday, February 15, 2010

Complementary Color Schemes and Split Complementary Color Schemes

It is a packaging design of Tea Forte. The complementary color scheme is: R+G+YG. It creates a great contrast to call attention, but doesn't dazzling our eyes at all.

Van Gogh's paintings are full of complementary colors. In this Self-portrait, he used split complementary color sets: G+YO+RO.

Henri Matisse's "The Dance". In this painting, Matisse used split color sheme: O+BG+BV. The high contrast of color creates a strong sense of motion.

Picasso's painting "Dora Maar" is an good example of using complementary color yellow and violet.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Take the After Image Test

Stare at this image for at least 20 seconds. Then move your eyes to a white background.

you will see

Johannes Itten was one of the first people to define and identify strategies for successful color combinations. Through his research he devised seven methodologies for coordinating colors utilizing the hue's contrasting properties. These contrasts add other variations with respect to the intensity of the respective hues; i.e. contrasts may be obtained due to light, moderate, or dark value.

1. The contrast of saturation

2. The contrast of light and dark

3. The contrast of extension

4. The contrast of complements

5. Simultaneous contrast

6. The contrast of hue

7. The contrast of warm and cool

Special Color Wheels

Someone did an interesting research. He showed thousands of random colors to people on internet and asked what they would call them. Then he collected these color names to make a data. He printed each name in its color and positioned the name on a color wheel. The above picture contains about 1,300 colors and the names for them that people gave. I think it is interesting because it is an illustration of the linguistic space of colors. Normal color wheels are scientific and rational，but this one shows more about our perception toward color.