Colour in design is very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction in someone else. Sometimes this is due to personal preference, and other times due to cultural background.

1. Mastering the Art of Colours
Principles of Graphic Design
Part:1

2. Introduction
Colour in design is very subjective. What evokes one
reaction in one person may evoke a very different reaction
in someone else. Sometimes this is due to personal
preference, and other times due to cultural background.
Colour theory is a science in itself.

3. Colour Systems
There are two primary colour systems - methods by which
colour is reproduced: additive and subtractive (also known
as reflective).
In simple terms - anything that emits light (such as the sun,
a screen, a projector, etc) uses additive, while everything
else (which instead reflects light) uses subtractive colour.

4. Additive
Additive colour works with
anything that emits or radiates
light. The mixture of different
wavelengths of light creates
different colours, and the more
light you add, the brighter and
lighter the colour becomes.

5. Additive
When using additive colour, we
tend to consider the building
block (primary) colours to be Red,
Green, and Blue (RGB), and this is
the basis for all colour you use on
screen. In additive colour, white is
the combination of colour, while
black is the absence of colour.
Additive Colour
Combination

6. Subtractive
Subtractive colour works on the
basis of reflected light. Rather
than pushing more light out, the
way a particular pigment reflects
different wavelengths of light
determines its apparent colour to
the human eye.

7. Additive
Subtractive colour, like additive,
has three primary colours - Cyan,
Magenta, and Yellow (CMY). In
subtractive colour white is the
absence of colour, while black is
the combination of colour, but it’s
an imperfect system.
Subtractive Colour
Combination

8. Colour Wheel
In order to make it easier to see the relationship between
different colours, the concept of the modern colour wheel
was developed around the 18th century.
These early wheels plotted the different primary colours
around a circle, mixing different primary colours together in
strict ratios to achieve secondary and tertiary colours.

9. Colour Wheel
The colour wheel depicts 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.

10. Three components of colour
The three component parts that help us define a colour are
hue, saturation and brightness.
Different shades or tints, saturations and hues are all
possible while still being within the yellow part of the colour
wheel. As a result, there are three primary component parts
that help us define a colour.

11. 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.

12. 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%.

13. Brightness
This is how bright a colour is,
typically expressed as a
percentage between 0 and 100%.
A yellow at 0% brightness will be
black, while the same yellow hue
and saturation at 100% brightness
will be the full yellow colour.

14. Colour Gamut
Colour gamut is a way of describing the full range of
potential colours a system can reproduce.
This is partially because of the nature of the two different
systems, but also as a consequence of limitations in our
technology - screens aren’t always capable of producing
the same range of colours as each other, and pigments
reflect light at a non-uniform rate as you reduce their
saturation.

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