Colour
(Or color as it has to be called…)
As I have said before I’m not a designer. I am however interested in learning more about design and how it should be done properly. This has been inspired a lot by the artwork done by students from Salford University at TechHub Manchester.
When I get chance I’ll update this with their twitter handles next time i’m in so that you too can become inspired.
My first post (given the title) will be about Colour and is to further my understanding after reading a couple of articles recommended in a post over at colorlovers.com
One of the links is to an article series from Smashing Magazine by @cameron_chapman titled: Color Theory for Designers.
The conclusion taken from the second article of the series summaries the terms introduced:
- Hue is color (blue, green, red, etc.).
- Chroma is the purity of a color (a high chroma has no added black, white or gray).
- Saturation refers to how strong or weak a color is (high saturation being strong).
- Value refers to how light or dark a color is (light having a high value).
- Tones are created by adding gray to a color, making it duller than the original.
- Shades are created by adding black to a color, making it darker than the original.
- Tints are created by adding white to a color, making it lighter than the original.
You would think that having done colour editing before for videos I would have an understanding of colour theory already — but no …
These are my brief rambling thoughts from the article and the understanding which I would like designers to question and correct. My understanding is that hue is the raw colour taken from the spectrum as it is, this would then have a high chroma value as it is the colour in its purest form not mixed with anything else.
From the definition, and the information given in the article — when I edit the saturation in Photoshop or Illustrator am I actually altering the chroma?
The value is the chroma value as it is how much black, white or grey is mixed.
Tones, Shades and Tints are all names given to new colours created when adding grey, black or white respectively.
I would love feedback from designers on my interpretation of this, and would like to say that I do not put this out onto the web as correct. This is purely my understanding of the article.
Links:
http://www.worqx.com/color/index.htm
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/28/color-theory-for-designers-part-1-the-meaning-of-color/
Originally published at http://www.rowleyaj.co on February 23, 2013.
