Color and typography are considered to be two of the most important concepts in graphic designing for a reason. Colors earn reactions from the emotional side of the brain while text evokes responses from the logical side. By understanding these concepts thoroughly, you can combine both elements and get your message across effectively.
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Understanding the color wheel
It is a known fact that all colors are composed of varying combinations of three primary colors red, yellow and blue. A regular twelve color wheel consists of three primary colors, three secondary colors and six tertiary colors. Each color also has three other variables attached to it; namely hue, saturation and value.
Hue is the base color that is assigned to any material. Saturation is the temperature or the intensity of that color and is usually decided based on the amount of gray the hue contains. Value is the brightness or darkness of the color and is usually dependent on the amount of black or white present in the hue.
Although it may not hold true for all viewers, certain colors evoke a specific emotion. Using the right colors to design your company logo or website can greatly improve the response gained from potential customers. Warm colors like red portray aggression while softer shades like pink evokes gentler emotions like romanticism and sensuousness.
You could also use warm and friendly colors like yellow and orange to evoke a sense of humor and energy. Cooler colors like blue, grey and green evoke a sense of trust, calm and credibility. White and black are classic colors that convey purity, sophistication and clarity.
Color combinations and readability
The safest color combinations are the ones that are juxtaposed in the color wheel. Using different shades of the same hue creates a color scheme known as monochromatic. The analogous color scheme consists of three adjacent colors on the wheel. Colors placed on the opposite sides of the color wheel also make interesting and impressive combinations and are called complementary colors.
When contrasting colors are placed next to each other, they tend to appear differently as opposed to when they are viewed alone. Thin lines appear darker than larger shapes of the same color as the surrounding contrast color near the thin line appears more prominent. Similarly, when light colored shapes are enclosed in a dark colored outline, they tend to appear smaller. Shapes with outlines of lighter shades tend to spread into the adjoining region.