Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

Burj Khalifa by Romain Trystram. This was part of a series called “The Tallest Skyscrapers”, to illustrate skyscrapers all over the world. This is located in Dubai.

In this color, the illustrater, Romain Trystram, used primary colors and secondary colors. In addition, he used warm and cool colors so the warmer colors (red, orange, yellow) stood out more. It created a vibrant color contrast. All of the colors in this picture are highly saturated and also quite intense because the darker hues and darker colors bring out the brighter ones. This picture is full of both complementary and near complementary colors. The blue and purple complement the orange and yellow and the red and orange are analogous on the color wheel. There is selective emphasis on the building and the roads below, even though the building is a cooler color and the road warmer colors. They both stand out from the top and bottom of the picture. The horizon also stands out to emphasis that it is dusk. The darker colors are definitely muted in this picture since the brighter colors stand out a lot more.

However, on the lower part of the illustration, the other buildings seem to fade to a darker color as the hue darkens. It shades into the darkness to further emphasis where the eyes should be drawn to on the picture. However, the tint is apparent towards the middle of the main, looped building as your eyes approach the middle of it. The tint in the middle of the illustration makes the dusk look a lot brighter, compared to the dusk at the edges of the picture, which are slightly more shaded and darker.

“Batman vs. Superman” By Doaly
Link for website

“Batman vs. Superman” poster designed by Doaly is a good example of interaction of color. The contrast between the sky and the buildings is significant. When comparing the sky and the buildings it can be seen as complementary because the buildings are close to black and the sky is close to orange and orange and black sit on the opposite side of the color wheel. This makes the temperature opposing since it is warm vs. cool colors. If looking at just the sky you can say there it is analogous because orange and yellow are close on the color wheel. This makes the sky seem warm. The bottom left hand corner of the sky is very saturated because the yellow is brightest in that corner verses the top right hand corner where the orange is a darker saturation. By having the sky have yellow in it, it adds intensity by making the sunset seem bright. The light shining out of the building creates tint almost because its a light grey color mixed in with white to give it that look. Having the moon almost white creates contrast between the dark buildings, which makes the moon stand out.

Hello NY by Julia Rothman http://www.book-by-its-cover.com/process/hello-ny-behind-scenes-cover-process

“Hello NY” has a cover by Julia Rothman that serves well as an example of using similar colors in a way to create contrast. The cover uses mostly desaturated colors, with each one being a varying shade of red, orange or pink. Rothman also uses whites to create natural borders around the colors, so that even though they are not saturated, the stand out from one another. The primary exception to this being the yellow-green hue used for the various trees in the art, as they pop out from the rest of the covers art as being highly saturated.

As I touched on early, the white interacts with the various shades of red, being a naturally good border for them, stopping them from bleeding together. These also server as the primary colors, as the eye gets attracted to the hard shapes out in the city to the fore ground. The art in general carries a warmer temperature to it, despite the abundance of white and greys in it. The primary colors are analogous to one another, as you can see they all carry the same sort of “root” color. The way that the colors become desaturated as they get closer to the edge of the top also does well with drawing the reader’s eye back down to the title.

Cover of Loop, by Koji Suzuki, found on the Book Cover Archive. Designed by Chip Kidd.

The book cover I chose only has three colors: yellow, red, and black. The yellow is extremely saturated, while the red is a darker shade. The two colors are both primary colors, so I wouldn’t say that they are complementary, nor would I say that they are tertiary. However, they both are warm colors, and they could be considered analogous.

The cover uses alternating patterns of the yellow and red to create an especially vibrant juxtaposition. Because the difference between the shade of red and the shade of yellow is so great, the point where they meet actually creates a very interesting phenomenon. The red and yellow seem to create an orange hue where they meet, despite there not being any actual orange hues in the cover. This contrast creates a sort of vibration effect, and it makes the piece feel very unstable, as if the cover is shifting, or moving ever so slightly as the viewer looks at it.

Additionally, the point at which the yellow meets the red (the tops and bottoms of the yellow rhombus) creates a juxtaposition between the darker shade of the red and that of the yellow. The color of the tips of the rhombuses seem to have a darker shade, even though the yellow remains constant throughout, similar to the Bezold Effect.

Designed: Albert Valencia
For: The Radio Disney Music Awards
http://creativeallies.com/creations/9wh3/contests/918/design-a-poster-for-the-radio-disney-music-awards

This poster was done by Albert Valencia and showcases a multitude of interactions with colors and how his rhetorical choices effectively represent the posters meaning. When we look at the poster, the two main colors that stick our are Orange and Blue, which are complimentary colors. The color interaction between the two of these colors give the poster balance. Orange being a secondary color while Blue being a primary color. There is a balanced contrast between the two when we look at how the distribution of colors are placed on the poster. The cascading blue on one side is equal in weight and size to the cascading orange on the other side. Hints that indicate the temperature of the poster would be the design of the palm trees which is often associated with summer, beaches, and sun. In addition to the hues of the colors themselves which indicate a warm temperature. The Blue hue moves from a lighter seafoam blue which can be seen at a lighter value or tint of blue. But then this recedes down into a low saturation of blue mixed in with the orange when combining the two tints. The logo of Mickey Mouse is outlined with bands of extremely tinted blues which progresses slowly into a tinted orange and then cuts off into white. When we’re looking at the intensity of the posters colors, the middle bands of the cascading blue and orange are sharp in hue. We can also note that looking at the bands of colors side by side, we can see that the colors intensify if we continue down the bands of colors when they started off a very tinted color. With the logo placed in the center with a strong bold blue color that outlines it, against the cream colored background, the logo’s boarder diminishes the background, making a clear statement between what is in the foreground and what is in the background.