Colour Theory 1

Today we talked about how there's no way to be certain that everyone sees colours the same, because of how colour is is detected in our eyes, and that's what effects the legibility and readability of type.

There are two types of mixing colour, additive and subtractive. Additive is when different coloured lights are shined on top of each other to cause different coloured reflections off objects, and that's how RGB works. By shining red, green and blue light on top of each other in various combinations you can create any chromatic value, which is made up from a hue, luminance (shade or tint) and saturation. Subtractive is about mixing pigments together to make other colours, which is how CMYK works. As you mix the pigments together they begin to neutralise each other, which is shown by the colour wheel.

When you mix complimentary colours together (colours opposite each other in the colour wheel) you get neutral colours. When you mix red and green, yellow and purple, and blue and purple you will get the same colour, because essentially you're mixing red, yellow and blue because essentially you're mixing red, blue and yellow every time.

We were helped to understand this by ordering the items we brought in a gradiented line around the tables. We found problems in that the shade or tint of an object affected our perception of what hue a colour was and ultimately where it should go in the line.

We then looked at how we can only identify what colour something is by comparing it to another object, which is what the above exercise was about. That's what pantones are about, and it was explained to us how they benefit the design community and help the printing process. We then practiced using the pantone system.

Under the light the values were as listed:

Postage Stamps - 485M

Tie - 201M

Jumper - 200M

Dress 7428M

We then checked our colour matching by turning the lights off, as the additive light should affect the pantone swatch and the item in exactly the same way if they are the exact same colour.

With the lights off:

Postage Stamps - 485M

Tie - 200M

Jumper - 199M

Dress - 7428M

That's not bad at all for a first effort, and I would suggest that the reason their is a slight difference is because we probably didn't have the appropriate set of swatches with regards to the materials finish.