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Interaction of Color Practice - Part 2

Okay, so this is good. This is starting to happen. So this is starting to push toward that. And this is pushing toward that. He started long enough and literally you're staring up here in this area, kind of away from the centre dots. How long you stare, the more the effect becomes pronounced, and it's never, ever going to reach the brilliance of this yellow. But it pushes in that direction. It becomes more yellow still, it's really fascinating, right? You have these two colors in the backgrounds, and they have such different effects on the foreground color. I think about the implications of this. If you're a brand manager and you've got a brand color and you're trying to imagine this color and different grounds, what do you do? How do you keep that color consistent? It's a big deal, right? And that may explain why certain brands choose very, very specific colors like red. And they say you can only use this color against white, or you can only use this color against black. They have ver...

y specific rules. The graphic designers I know who aren't in the branding business who are kind of on the outside of it, Um, are often annoyed by this because it's so limiting. But these are the kinds of things you have to think about what is going to happen to your hero color when it no longer looks like your hero color. And it has everything to do with its context. It's background. So that's very typical for brands to try to really control how the colors air used Are you doing with that? Well, now, with these big fields here, I think we should go to Ah, slightly different. Where's the all right here? Let's go to, um, this is one of the ones I did last night. So we see that That's actually one color. We see it covered up here and starts to look different. I want to play with this one of water. Okay, So create this assignment. A Z I think I said earlier has been taught in our schools. Uh, Albert started teaching it, I think, in the forties and then really developed it when he was teaching at Yale in the fifties and created his book in the early sixties. And so it's a continuation of many years, many different experiences, and then since that time has been taught by his students to other people. Ah, and those students continue to teach their students and their students continue to teach their students. So it's more of this continuum of color definitely look different. Yeah, I think if you go perhaps a little bit more purple on this. Since this is yellow and we're looking again at complementary colors, the purple is going to remove itself from this and make it look a little bit more yellow. This actually looks pretty good in terms of thistle, but I think if you were to put a more purple, slightly more purple background, it's even a little closer to that. This is a difficult concept. This is not easy. It's ah, as you can see. But once you arrive at something, I think what we'll do is save those colors. And then perhaps you can use those colors later in a free study. So when you find something you like, just kind of put that one aside and we'll go back to that later and revisit it. It's easy to see the light and dark changes. Colors are gonna look dramatically different in terms of their lightness and darkness. It's definitely more difficult and also more surprising to see what happens when the hue also starts to change slightly. When you see the subtraction of the hue that might work. Having a hard time with red and green? Yeah, red green is tough. They have equal I'd values, so they're not going to have a dramatic effect on the changes of light and dark. It's going to be principally about the hue. So as you subtract green from this and as you subtract read from it, it's going to be very different so we can see how this has actually becoming a little bit greener. Looking more green because you're taking the read out. This one is a little bit tough. I don't really see that. So I would say I think we still need to find something a little bit more neutral. Try changing the red to something a little bit duller. A dollar red. Yes, Sometimes it's a matter of literally looking at this color here and saying, What can I use to make that a little bit better? How you doing on the app? Uh, yeah, I think if you change that ground color a little bit. Now you have to You have the added issue here of looking up there because it looks different over here. So you sort of have to figure out with the correlation in between this and this, it's one thing it's hard enough to do it there and then to try to do it up here is Well, it's tough again when he find a color combination that she likes. Save it. And we're going to use those later in a free study. Now, Richard, a lot of people asking online because they've seen all these wonderful papers that you've been using our streets have been using here in the studio. Do you have, ah, preference for a paper supplier or someone that you actually go to get all this really wonderful stuff? Color rate is available at almost all our stores. Uh, and you can buy it online at all the usual places. Um, including the user will place always has it. You get better prices, obviously if you do that. But it's just colored paper color. Eight color aid and cholerae paper was not developed for this assignment. It was developed for, I think in the forties for textile designers and then was discovered believed by Albers students as it's actually pretty interesting as a way of utilising, you know, color for this particular project is this color rate stuff. But it was first industry supplier for textile designers. Initially, Elber students used color swatches from magazines, books, anything that was printed. They didn't have this kind of a resource, and so they were constantly just finding color swatches and color papers. And there was a lot of sharing because it was just so difficult to find these things. The students would share their colors. It is a question. Yeah, I was wondering, How do you feel about other online tools, such as cooler made by Like Adobe De, which has now become adobe color, used to be called cooler. That's a great tool. It allows you to sample the color in a photograph or any kind of a digital color image, and then very quickly generate palettes. So light and dark pallets, warm and cool pallets and vivid and dull pallets. Essentially, what you were doing this morning with the color grids is something that now is automated through adobe color, formerly cooler and That's a really great out to have to. Nice thing about that, too, is Adobe has their online community. I think I think you can upload your palates and share them and also have access to them on any device. That's a really good device. Really good thing for mobile applications of color. No, pretty good. It seems like if you if you don't know if this is cheating. But if you there is no change, go. Okay, well, then, if you pick kind of in between the colors as they are on the wheel, then it kind of does a lot of the work. Like, um, just just finding the to on the on the edges and then looking for the one on this wheel that was in the middle makes it seem that's the secret. Is finding the middle color right? If we're doing it with colored paper, it's the same exact thing you're finding that mixture color. Same thing with the monochromatic palette. You're finding that middle purple that's in between those two that's going to have that particular effect. So again, color subtraction. There's two different things that are happening. Subtraction of light and dark so the background will subtract itself and either make the color look lighter or darker and also the subtraction of hue. The color will actually take itself out. So if it's a yellow background, that yellow is going to remove itself from whatever colors on top. Now this becomes really critical, obviously, for people who are working with, like painters, um, photographers. So the same color can look very, very different on different grounds, and you can produce really interesting effects that way, if you have a limited range of colors to use three, or if you're trying to create something with limited range color, you can get a greater range of colors, the effect of a greater range of colors with very few colors based on your color choices. Actually, our teaching system. Christine, I'd like to know. Actually, how does this relate to your work as a designer and indeed a letter? Oh, well, yeah. I mean, we're thinking about how I'm thinking about it more of like in a print layout and having my colors that clash clash, and we're talking about colors that clash or having a hero color. And like a magazine layout, for example, I'm Actually, this is This is kind of new to me, like having the subtract like the color, subjection and all. And I'm kind of excited to apply it to a lot of my work in the future because I was like, Oh, I never thought of that of using, like the same color on different backgrounds. And maybe how does that help? Like the interaction and how I can make something more interesting than when we get to the free studies, which I believe some. At some point this afternoon we'll do that. You'll see it in action. You'll see what happens when you start to make a composition and you have the same color in two different spots and two different color backgrounds and see what happens to it. You can get some really interesting effects that way. Now it's It's also, I think, a valid point to say that this is a purely experimental project and that the applications in the real world are, you know, sometimes hypothetical. And so we can just kind of separate ourselves from out for a man and just think about this as a way of becoming more aware of colors becoming more aware of the effects of colors and increasing our confidence in terms of how we use colors in our own work, but also just kind of in our own. Walking around our day to day lives, understanding how we see color. It's kind of what this is about. It's really understanding this idea that color is completely relative to its background no matter what. So I think at this point we should try to do something even harder. And that's make two different colors look alike using the same principle of subtraction. This so essentially, you're trying to do this. You're trying to take two very different colors, not very different colors. It's neutral colors again and working with them in two different backgrounds to try to achieve a likeness. Now you're never going to get it exact. It's not really the point again. It's just trying to figure out a way of tuning your eyes and teaching yourself to see this. So before we get to this point, you're just experimenting, so choose to different grounds, and then again, you're gonna be looking for a middle color, and initially, when you find those middle colors, they're gonna look dramatically different from each other or the same depends on what you find essentially. Then ultimately, you're going to make this kind of ah, jump and put the colors down below. But initially, just gonna look like this. Making two colors looks like one again. It's about subtraction. Just attracting outside, subtracting itself from here. So taking the green out of this, taking the blue green out over here, taking the lightness out, making this look darker, making look different, right? And seeing those colors down there trying to make these two colors look alike. Okay, so you see, the differences here knows of those two colors. Do you want to continue working with paper? Okay, I'm gonna continue to do a little experiment in on the Yeah, here. So you see how dramatically different they are there. And what happens when you apply the colors, they start to look alike. Do you start with the absolutely start there? Yeah. You can start with two colors that are different from each other and then start to work with backgrounds. It's the same principle is just taking a slightly different route to it. So if you think of the last exercise is trying to figure out what's the color in between each of them. What's the way to think about this one where you're getting two different colors and try and get him look the same subtraction. So think about subtracting the light and dark as well as the hue, right? Same exact thing. Um, just your objective is different, but in this case, no subtracting the blue. I started here and I've subtracting the blue from that bottom thing, taking the blue out, taking the darkness out of it, the top trying to take the orange out of it. So I'm trying to neutralize those two colors. Essentially. Okay. Do you do that? You could start with two very light tints of what you might end up with in the end, a light tint of blue light tint of orange and then darker variants of those colors is backgrounds. Okay, I didn't see what happens. I always say, See what happens. You should try the answer because it's all about trial and error. Yeah, right. And remember the quote from Albert, it's all about trial and error. And through this process, you just become more aware of color. Hopefully become more confident. Hopefully, it's not confusing you more. It might be, but initially again, like dribbling a basketball. The more you do this, the more confidence you gain. The better you become working with colors you mentioned there, Christine, the advice you got from your professor we have a question for you, Richard. From s are the guard. I think that's how you say the same. What was the impact of support? Ran's teaching on you. Tremendous. Uh, I wouldn't be sitting here right now if it wasn't for him. Um, Rand was, uh he was was unique and that he was able to design Children's books at the same time that he was designing corporate collateral pieces and identity work for corporations like IBM. So we straddle that world of the ultra capitalist world of corporate graphic design, corporate identity and then the world of Children's book illustration. And the work has a very similar quality. I don't know if you're familiar with that IBM poster where it's every Revis. So there's a picture of an I a picture of a B and then the letter M. I don't know if you have you ever seen that? And it reads IBM. You know, it's it's a Children's idea. The Revis, It's, uh and he was able Teoh, apply that Teoh a corporation like IBM and make it work and make it serious. And that's kind of how he thought about design and certainly what he tried to influence with his students. He was very exacting. We were only allowed to use one typeface or one Sarah from one San Serif, and it was his choice. Usually he determined our color palettes, which were the colors that he already liked or had appropriated from people like Matisse and Miro, all of his heroes. He was very much into this idea of passing along and aesthetic sensibility. He was a true modernist, and that it was all about less is more. It was all about economy of means trying to do more with less. Um, he was a very religious man, so he was very influential and spiritually and that way. Not that you know, I'm particularly religious, but I definitely understood that and value that value that in him and the quality of his work just spoke for itself. He couldn't be ah, have been a better influence, I think, and as a teacher. I love it because, um, here's a guy who grew up in Brooklyn and talk like Erupted in Brooklyn. But he wrote, like he had spent his whole life in an ivory tower, you know, and was able to articulate things in such profound and beautiful ways, and just it was a lovely experience.