Cop Lecture 5: Visual Literacy: Systematic and Subjective Colour

Visual Literacy: Systematic and Subjective Colour

Books:

Josef Albers (Interaction of Colour)

Johanesse Itten (The Art of Colour)

• Chromatic value is hue, saturation and tone (luminance)
• Colour itself is 3D and has a range of different values e.g. paler, darker
• If you're talking about hues it also relates to pigments and media and what you put it on
• Complementary colours sit opposite each other on the colour wheel but are also colours which are made from primary colours e.g. orange and blue (orange is made form yellow and red)
• Neutrals are the reduction of tone, hue and saturation; they are also tertiary colours.
• Mixing complimentary colours together create a balanced neutral oclour.
• Methods of desaturatiing *decreasing the chromatic value)

• Shade - adding black
• Tone - adding gray
• Tint - adding white

• Physical - how we see colour
• Physiological - how we perceive colour
• Psychological - how culture and knowledge we have have effect on how we perceive colour

• Rods - allows us to differentiate black and white
• Cones - allows use to differentiate colours (cone 1 -red/orange, cone 2 - green, cone 3 - blue/violet)
• Due to physiological responses the eyes can be fooled to seeing the full range of visible colours 
• Spectral colours - *yellow doesn't exist? - yellow is seen through the combination of the red/orange and green cone 
• RGB - paint
• CMYK - print

• Subtractive colour - the mixture of CMK to produce RGB and mixing them together outcomes black as you'[re removing the chromatic value) 
• Additive value - mixture of RGB (adding chromatic value) = white
• Colour is contextual and different people will have different perceptions of different colours  

• Pantone swatches - helpful to colour match as you can use the codes instead of their names and can help match colours when sending it to other people to match as well. It's also necessary as our eyes can be fooled depending on how light is reflected on our eyes. 
• Systemising colours is also important due to colour sometimes not being consistent and dependent on hue, saturation and how it's reflected.