Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

In this piece by Ken Wong, the colors all seem to share the same shade or tint. That is to say, if converted to purely grayscale, the colors would all seemingly be the same. The hues in this picture look to be pulled from the darker end of the pastels. The color that has the steepest contrast to all the others is the pinkish purples of the “brain” and the accents on the shirt, the icecream and the bicycle icon. Surprisingly, this is image has a really dull, muted color scheme but it’s still fairly warm due to the yellow greens and the soft oranges in the background. Some of the colors are somewhat complementary but most of the colors are analogous. As I said at the beginning they all share around the same shade or tint. I mean, yes there is pinks, oranges, greens, and yellows, which are all close complements but the fact that they’re the same tint, they become more analogous. There are blue and red accents down at the bottom that don’t really fit in the color pallete of this piece but yet they don’t stick out so much that they are disruptive to the piece. Lastly, the saturation of the color is very low. That is to say the intensity of the colors are not very high. The colors in this piece, with the exception of a few pinks and purples, are fairly muddy and dull and desaturated. Overall the value of this piece is fairly dark everywhere but the center where all the bright whites and light blues are. This is because the dark dull muted green background the vibrancy of all of the other colors are pretty low.  Ken Wong “Puffy Jr”

By: Haley Fischer (http://www.haleyfischer.com/blog/2014/1/21/senior-thesis)

I chose this image to represent interaction of color because of the way the design really blends all the colors into each other. Some design only focus on primary colors (red,yellow,blue) or some with secondary (orange, green, purple). But in this design, it looks as if it is a graduated color wheel made up of small tiles that have a different shade of the color in it’s segment. The choice of order is not random either, the colors adjacent to one another are next to one another on the color wheel so they blend together more effectively. As you move vertically on the design, the color in the segment changes in saturation so it becomes lighter closer to the center and darker/more saturated as you move toward the middle, then lighter toward the edge. This technique playing with value and saturation gives this design a much more unique feel than if it was just simply a color wheel. By having different saturations, the wheel becomes much more detailed and provides countless more color options. There is also texture in the design which gives it an interesting feel. Between each color palette there is a white blank space which gives the feel that each square is on it’s own (almost like a post it note). This gives each square a raised feeling that looks like tiles, so when you look far away each color segment appears to be just a color, but as you get closer, its made up of tiny squares each with a different hue and color. This is a great example of selective emphasis, how the designer uses color to change the way the shapes are perceived.

License Copyright All rights reserved by Let’s Be Friends Okay

This is a poster designed based upon the song “How to Disappear Completely” by Radiohead. It showcases an interesting interaction between colors and effectively demonstrates the use of color in a design poster.

When we look at the poster, there are three main colors that stick out: blue, red, and purple. On the left side of the poster we see a shade of light blue, yet as we draw our eye over the poster from left to right we see the blue becoming darker. These different hues provide contrast, balance, and a sense of warmth when compared to the fiery red found in the middle and right of the poster. While there seems to be only one shade of red, the interaction of the primary colors blue and red creates the secondary color purple. The purple within the poster is subtle, yet the intensity of the red makes the purple feel warm along with the darker blue and seemingly radiates out into the black sky that fills the upper half of the poster. The yellowish moon or sun behind the color design also creates an interesting contrast to the mix of primary colors below it as it is noticeably lighter than the rest of the colors on the poster (except the light tinted blue). This element actually makes the sun/moon almost more intense than the other colors in the poster and I would argue is the first thing an observer would view.

This piece by Prachi Jain combines bright tones of a color with dull tones of the same color. The piece uses a combination of primary colors in the top and bottom sections with tertiary colors in the left and right sections. The brighter colors in the top and bottom sections are intensified by the dull colors used in the left and right sections because the dull colors are sort of drab so they make the bright colors seem even more energetic than they already are. In the case of this piece the artist used a hue to create the difference in the sections. The saturation of the colors makes the bright red look brownish in the dull sections. Different values are also displayed in the piece with the use of the bright green, red, yellow, and orange; these colors are all light and unstable so they keep the eye moving around, where as in the dull sections the color combinations are more stable because of the drab colors. The colors used in this piece are complementary, which can be seen with the color interaction between the green and the red in the top and bottom sections.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/5105101/Color-and-Typography

Orbital Mechanics – Tatiana Plakhova (complexitygraphics.com)

The image I chose to use for this blog post is part of Tatiana Plakhova’s Orbital Mechanics series. I believe that this gorgeous image is a great representation of color interaction, especially because the spiderweb of color that makes up the foreground object isn’t large and solid, but rather made up of a thousand smaller lines and dots. The background is extremely desaturated, featuring a primarily black canvas, and in a smaller space, a very faded blue that is used to highlight the saturated foreground colors of green (which is saturated) and white (unsaturated), which both interact with each other to create a beautiful, vibrant foreground that stands out against the unsaturated background colors. There are tints of yellow both on the foreground and background, bleeding out from the foreground image as though actually casting light on the black background. There are a lot of analogous colors in the foreground as opposed to complementary colors. The range of hue is from yellow to green and blue, all of which blend into one another and diminish each other rather than standing out on their own. The colors that make up the globe outline are blue and purple, the two colors bleeding into each other rather than having defined edges that separate them. The intensity of the foreground colors really makes the green and white stand out against the globe, but the black background also makes it really pop for the eye.

“The Lorax” by Dr Seuss, Dr Seuss Illustrator. 1971. Barnes and Noble.

I’ve chosen to examine Dr. Seuss’ book cover for “The Lorax” for this post. As is commonn for all art work for his stories, there is a constant mix of vibrant colors, sometimes colors that don’t seem like they would work well together but somehow they are aesthetically pleasing and not too harsh on the eyes.

The obvious stand-out colors are the yellow and pink that top the trees in this image, noting their importance to the storyline before the reader even opens the front page. Against the tiffany blue background, these two colors are intensified. The blue sky and green foreground have light saturation and interact in a way that allows neither color to overpower the other. There are multiple hues of yellow on the cover, in the tree top, tree base, and the Lorax’s mustache, thought the difference is infantismal. The colors are complementary in their interaction, composed of more than primary colors, and because they are all from different places on the color wheel the cover is not anagulous.