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 By Roger Vetruba |
Do you know what colors to beat your computer into choosing? Those of
you with art backgrounds do, but although the video/media professional
are generally educated, I frequently see bad cable ads with orange,
purple and green graphics (really!). Often graphics lack the "punch" of
those agency spots.
Remember the primary colors? Red, yellow, and blue in one graphic and
you'd better be selling playground equipment. Way back we learned to mix
yellow and blue Easter egg dye for a wonderful army drab green (how
appetizing).Green is a secondary color (with orange and violet), while
the color further mixed are tertiary colors.
Yeah, so? Do you know what color to use in an attorney's ad? You do?
Let me guess- dark brick red, woodgrain, and gold. Then what do you use
for the bank? Frequently companies will have their own color scheme,
dictated by their clientele.
k everyone, get out your crayons. We're gonna flash back to grade
school when you learned to color in the lines. Well, now we have our
lovely Frankenstein computer creations to color in the lines for us, but
they never seem to pick the right colors (unless you love that art
nouveau default grey).
The Color Wheel
In truth, you intuitively know what colors to use, but here are the cognitive rules of the editor's thumb. The first (and most commonly abused) trick is an analogous (1/3 of the color wheel) color scheme. The aforementioned dark red with brown (brown is technically dark orange-adjacent to red) and gold/brass trim (also adjacent). The two dark (shades) with a light (tint) for vibrancy. This works with any portion of the color wheel.
Another common trick is to use a neutral (grey, brown) tone to strengthen a hue. Blue isn't very vibrant next to yellow, but works great with grey or silver. The attorney's red seems more rich with the woodgrain (brown). Be aware that vibrant, hue-intensive color appear to come forward, while neutrals tend to recede.
How ‘bout those Miami dolphins? That shocking complimentary (opposite on color wheel) blue-green and orange is rather aggressive. I don't recommend any life insurance companies trying that. A more practical approach would be to use a tint of the orange (peach), and add some neutral white or black , with a darkened blue-green.
Another wonderful trick is "leading" the eye. The blue and yellow alone together (?) would tend to clash, but the middle hues make the contrast acceptable. Yellow being brighter, it appears to come forward. This is almost always true: the warm color are dominant and cool colors recessive.
Just to confuse, dark tones (not hues-tone is the amount of white or black) appear forward. The reason is simple-atmosphere. Compare close tree branches to distant ones.
The last gem I impart is a fun one to use. Pick any hue and use a liberal amount of it (say violet). Find the opposite color on the wheel (yellow) and use a light tint of it, with a very light tint of the original color. This always makes interesting combinations (and sometimes Georgia O'Keefe paintings).
Color is individual, and a world of study is available. There are years
of research available at your public library. So many years could never
be crammed into an article, like gradients imply volume, or the
psychology of color. Read The study of color by Joseph Albers for the
ultimate tutorial on color (a short and fun book to boot!).
Incidentally, I highly recommend doing the above exercises with
crayons-happy coloring!
Roger Vetruba is a fine art (fine modifies art) and film direction student at St.Cloud State University. He loves character animation in LW and seeks remote work.
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