Graphic Design Foundations: Color

Learn the properties of color, and how to use it to tell stories, create moods, draw attention, and add new possibilities to your creative toolbox.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Traditional media to digital: The long and winding road of color
• Exercise files

1. How Color Shapes Meaning

• Introduction: How color shapes meaning
• Universal, cultural, and personal symbols of color
• Concepts made clear
• Brand identity and language
• Sequence and pattern

2. The Color Wheel

• What is the color wheel?
• Primary colors, primary concerns
• Playing with complementary colors
• Tertiary colors: The basics of brown and gray

3. The Elements of Color

• An overview of elements
• Value is not a moral judgment
• Saturation to neutralization
• Temperature: How hot is hot?
• Textures, marks, dashes, and dots
• Seeing through color: Opaque, translucent, and transparent

4. Contrast

• What is contrast?
• Creating focus: Living on the edge
• Creating the readable image
• Connecting contrast with content

5. Color and Light

• Illuminating light
• The effect of contrast in light
• Value and saturation
• On temperature
• On complements
• Secondary and reflected light
• RGB vs. CMYK

6. Palettes

• An introduction to palettes
• Limited palettes: A harmonious color palette
• Harmony and discord
• Unifying color grounds
• Unifying glazes and layers
• Charting a color family

7. Color Shape, Texture, and Context

• Balance of shapes: How much is too much?
• Weaving textural color
• Color in context
• Color blindness
• Challenge: Deconstructing color
• Solution: Demo of deconstructing color

Next Steps

• Conclusion