Basic Color Theory For Designers

The first box of crayons you ever got probably had the basic eight: black, white, red, yellow, blue, purple, brown and orange. And at that time, this was all you needed—every shade in the world fit into one of these categories. And then you discovered pink and you had to get the new box with sixteen colors. Your palette expanded. Gray, peach, silver…before long, you asked for the big one. The mother of all crayons. The 64 count set with the sharpener on the box. Surely now you had them all; every color was in your grasp.

Color is an important form of nonverbal communication. From the clothes we wear to the food we eat, color influences our choices. Our perception of the world is affected by color. Likewise, the way the world perceives us is also affected by color. In fact, color, many times, is the most significant feature of an item. Designers, therefore, cannot afford to treat color lightly.

When mixing and matching, it helps to know a little color theory. Back to kindergarten and that box of eight crayons. One exercise you likely completed was a color wheel. The wheel is made by placing the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue, if you are working with ink) equidistant from each other on a circle. By blending the primaries you get the secondary colors: red and yellow produce orange; yellow and blue produce green; blue and red produce purple. Further blends of adjacent colors produce tertiary colors, and so on.