Not very many people are considered well trained in the verses of color theory, and while I am no doubt lacking in the field myself, I thought I would share some information on color aesthetics and color theory vocabulary for my readers. The main focus of this article will be on web development, but it can definitely be applied to literally all forms of art.
Color Vocabulary Terms
Below are the most widely used terms for describing color
Spectrum: All the possible colors in a color space. These spaces could include RGB or CMYK.
Hue: This defines the specific location on a color wheel or in the color spectrum. If you were to select a red area in the color spectrum, you have chosen a red hue.
Value: This describes the range from light to dark. a red hue could be chown at varying values. It could vary from dark to light, where the dark would be a traditional red color, and the light would be a very light pink.
Saturation: This defines the intensity of the color, and can sometimes actually be referred to as intensity.
Muted: When a person is describing muted colors, they are often referring to colors that have low saturation, or colors that they deem to be of low intensity.
Contrast: This is probably most important when trying to determine the readability of the design. You want to have high contrast color choices for your text areas, where the separation between two colors on the spectrum is high enough to allow for an easy read. If you were to put a purple color on a turquoise background for instance, the readability would be effected negatively.
Tint: This is the process of adding white or light to a color.
Tone: This is the process of adding darkness or black to a color.
Choosing a Color Theme
In order to appropriately decide on a color theme, an understanding of color relationship is important. It allows you to choose proper colors that relate to each other in ways that promote the colors. Additionally, cultural differences can be determined through use of color. In North America, it is not uncommon to have green associated with envy, money, or more recently, environmentalism.
These different aspects must all be considered when choosing the color theme for your design. I personally prefer a monochromatic style of web design, which takes a single hue of color and uses different values of that hue to obtain an overall look and feel. While I didn’t completely apply this to Big Slick Design, you can see that the text colors are generally all a blue hue.
An awesome plug-in for photoshop called Hot Door Harmony lets you select colors through harmonic relationships. The program shows different color selections within the browser-safe spectrum, and you can increase the tint or tone settings to see different values. You can copy the hex code of any color for your use. It is available for a free trial here.
That’s about all I have today on Color Aesthetics and color vocabulary, but be sure to check back as I delve into this topic a little bit deeper in upcoming posts.
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