Graphic Design Theory #1 - Color Part 1

the thing that makes learning about design theory difficult is that everything is related it is hard to talk about a single rule or principle without referring to others this series is going to cover all the important design principles rules and terms but in an entirely visual way we will analyze and compare real examples of designs and illustrations and by the end of this series you will be confident to apply all the theories to your own work in this first episode we will take a deep dive into color theory learning about definitions like chroma value hue tint shade tone and the meaning behind the most popular colors used in graphic design and visual arts [Music] as you can see on my screen there's a lot to cover in this video but before we jump into going through all the exciting things that you need to know about color i wanted to let you know that you can actually find all of these references from the link in the description below it is a miller node board which you can access for free and if you are interested to have an even deeper understanding of design theory and color in particular then you can sign up to the newsletter again that you can access from the description below and you will be notified once my course which i'm currently working on will be released but without any further delay let's jump straight into learning about definitions first so you probably heard of hue saturation and value or brightness now these are quite basic things that you most likely know already if you are using any of the adobe applications most applications would show it as a vertical bar but it can also be represented with a 360 degrees color wheel and that is why normally when we refer to hue it would be 360 numbers which represents the 360 degrees of full circle saturation is a term that you probably again heard of and this is an important one but probably not as important as chroma now chroma is the term that we normally use to define the purity of a color so the highest chroma value you can get when you have a color without mix with anything else so for example red a complete red would be the highest chroma you can get and then once you start introducing different shades to it like white you will end up having different tints of red or if you mix black you would end up having different shades of red and finally if you add gray any type of gray you will end up having different tones of red and when we talk about saturation it's slightly different because it's more of a comparative measure where you would compare the intensity of a color to the most vibrant or highest intensity color which we would normally set as hundred percent so if you imagine the color picker in photoshop as a coordinate system saturation would be the x-axis and the y-axis would be brightness or value which defines how bright or dark a color is now so far it sounds fairly simple but it gets complicated because hue can actually affect and impact the value of a color and there is a perfect example here so you can see the colors on top and then below it you can see their values so even if you pick only pure colors with their highest chroma you will still have differences in their value yellow for example is a very bright high value color compared to this darker blue is very low in terms of value so try not to confuse value with thin shade and tone because even without mixing white black or gray into the pure colors you would still have differences between the values and that is why it is so important when you are choosing a color theme which colors you pick because you can end up having a low-key or dark composition if you pick darker colors or a vivid and bright composition if you pick brighter or higher value colors so you know i'm going to show you plenty of illustrations and examples which will help you to make more sense of these terms but first i would like to bore you with just a little bit more science because i feel like this is also very important when we talk about colors now the probably the easiest diagram here that you can understand is that color wheel that we mentioned earlier in this particular one you can see the primary colors highlighted so these are the ones that pop out the most from this circle then we have the secondary colors which are always a mixture of the two neighboring primary colors so orange for example is made up of yellow and red or green is made up of yellow and blue and finally purple is made up of blue and red once you start mixing secondary colors with primary colors you would get tertiary colors and those are the ones on this circle closest to the center point now as a designer or illustrator the color wheel is also important for you to be able to find color harmonies but most importantly to find complementary colors these are great color pairs and they work really well together so the way you can find them is very simple where you have let's say yellow you just go to the opposite side of the color wheel and you will find the complementary color which is purple or the same thing for blue the complementary color will be orange and for red is going to be green so this is already a color harmony but we will learn much more about this and all the other different types of harmonies between colors now besides the color wheel we can also categorize colors based on temperature and that's what you can see here at the bottom so it's measured in kelvin and the lowest values are the warmer stones while higher kelvin values would be the cooler tones in the middle we have white which is 5500 kelvin and sunlight is actually a little bit lower than that it's 4900 kelvin now this way of categorizing colors is more important for film and photography but still as a designer or illustrator it's good to know that this is just another way of categorizing them and i could get much more scientific than this if we started talking about wavelength but once again when you compare the color temperature and the wavelength you probably can already see the similarities but let's move on and talk a little bit about color spaces as a designer this is definitely very important for you and most likely you are already familiar with the differences between cmyk and rgb so these are two color spaces used for different medium while rgb is mainly used with devices that needs light to represent colors like a projector camera and monitor cmyk would be used for print and this diagram here shows it really well that the visible spectrum of colors is actually larger than rgb and cmyk and rgb is also larger than what we can represent with cmyk or cyan magenta yellow and black ink it might be also useful to remember that cmyk is called the subtractive color method where you are starting with white so that's just simply the color of the paper and then you are subtracting from it until you are getting to black which is the most intense color when it comes to print on the contrary rgb is an additive color method where you end up having white when you combine or mix all the colors together generally what you need to remember is that the colors that you see on your screen are not going to be as vivid and vibrant once they are printed so this is what would normally happen once you print an image out it gets a bit desaturated and the colors get slightly washed out this is again because of the difference in the spectrum once again all of these vibrant colors in these corners like here and also here and there they are the ones that cmyk cannot represent and again this is a huge topic we could talk about icc color profiles color management and spot colors but i am not going to go into too much detail once again i will cover these in the course that i mentioned earlier in the beginning but moving on i want to show you something extremely important this is something that took me years to figure out and understand the importance of this is key and contrast now these are two terms that normally you would hear separately but once you start thinking of the two together as a pair that's when it starts to make sense and that's when it will help you creating really striking compositions whether it's photography illustration or graphic design so both of these terms key and contrast has something to do with the value and you can see here on the top that the top third of that coordinate system would represent the high key values of colors then we have mid key or mid tones in the center and then low key or darker values at the bottom and contrast again you probably are already familiar with means that you have colors next to each other that are clearly different from each other the higher the contrast usually the more striking that difference is and here is a very interesting chart which shows the combination of key and contrast just simply by using grayscale values but of course this would also apply to color images and to make this easier to understand and to visualize it better here are a couple of portraits showing exactly the same pairing of these two terms so on the top left we have the high key low contrast followed by high key mid contrast and finally high key high contrast image so they are all very bright so the value is high but we are increasing the contrast and mainly in this case the lips are the standout feature on the right side it almost feels like it wants to jump off the screen and that is how contrast can be used as a focal point in the composition further down we have the medium key role again from left to right increasing the contrast and finally in the last row we have all the low key portraits and similarly here we have low key low contrast on the left and then we reach good old zhongvik on the right with loki high contrast now these type of images are usually the most striking ones because you have a lot of black and then you have some powerful bursts of white in certain places and of course the highest contrast you can achieve in a composition is pure black next to pure white alright so now that we cover the basics of fundamentals of colors let's talk about the meaning of color and this is more color psychology and this is where we start to see some interesting examples before we continue i just wanted to let you know about our creative membership program for a small monthly fee you get access to over 200 hours of adobe certified online training courses master all the tools and skills needed to become a professional graphic designer or illustrator as a pro member you will get mentoring from me and my team access to webinars student forum and creative briefs to help you build an outstanding portfolio pro members can also download the project files for all of our youtube tutorials sign up at yessimodesigner.com memberships and start your free trial today and now let's head back to the tutorial first here is red now if you want to learn more about the meaning of red i actually have a separate video on that which you can again find in the description below and in a nutshell red is great for grabbing attention it's a very striking color especially when it's combined with black and white and it can carry a lot of meanings from power aggression and strength to lust fertility and in some places the world also prosperity in general when you use red in your composition it can help to make decisions quickly it's almost like a call to action moving on we have blue which is the color of the sky and c so naturally it would have a calming effect but it can also represent trust pureness tranquility and stability it is actually the most used color on the internet and amongst corporations especially for brands that are related or associated with safety and cleanliness an interesting fact about blue is that it actually slows our metabolism down so that is again why we consider it a calming color and moving on we have green which is associated with nature growth and balance it symbolizes harmony serenity and it can also be used for safety just like blue just think about the green man in the traffic lights it is a color definitely often used by medical and eco brands moving on we have yellow which is the color of sunshine and it usually represents joy happiness and energy now remember when we talked about value amongst all the different hues and yellow is one of the highest value color so there is definitely a connection there why we would normally associate it with energy generally when we look at yellow color it evokes pleasant and friendly feelings and it's often used in the entertainment industry and for toys however that can also mean that sometimes it can feel a little bit childish of course it didn't feel childish in kill bill but you just have to be aware of that aspect of this color next let's take a look at purple now this is usually associated with royalty luxury nobility and ambition so it is ideal for luxury brands and high-end goods and services it's worth remembering that purple is the least light color by men but it is actually in the top three favorite color for women and last but not least let's take a look at orange now this is the color of communication and optimism it combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow and usually can give the sensation of heat and can be associated with summer now i wanted to show you intentionally that it can represent so many different feelings and emotions from the very daunting and depressing apocalypse now to films like lion king and even fun places like summer camps to summarize meanings of colors are not like an exact science compared to the previous things that we talked about it's more personal and colors can have different effects on different people and culture difference again can really impact the perception of color thanks a lot for watching like and share this video if you enjoyed it don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell icon to get notified whenever we release new videos click on the link on my right and start your membership today to get access to over 200 hours of training courses and personal mentoring by me and my team of creative professionals have fun learning guys and i will see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Yes I'm a Designer

Views: 49,150

Keywords: Graphic Design Theory #1 - Color Part 1, color theory, color mixing, graphic design, color, theory, palette, harmony, harmonious, hue, saturation, value, colour picker, chroma colors, tint, shade, tone, meaning of colours, Key and contrast, yes i'm a designer, design theory, color theory graphic design, primary colors, complimentary colors, color theory for artists, graphic design basics, colour theory, graphic design for beginners

Id: rfmJI8BqxC8

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021