Colour is used to create emotions, visual interest and show importance. There are many ways to categorise colours such as warm (red, yellow, orange) and cold (blue, green, purple).

You could add a gallery of images and videos to show your understanding more clearly. Is there a logo, brand design or which you think interestingly uses colours?

There are 3 main categories in colour theory:

• The Colour Wheel
• Colour Harmony
• Context

The Colour Wheel

The Colour Wheel can be used to find complementary colours: red and green, blue and orange, purple and yellow. The colour wheel usually shows the primary colours (red, blue, yellow), secondary colours (green, purple, orange) and tertiary colours (red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue violet and red violet). It can be used to evoke different emotions and work out what colours go well together such as complementary colours ((blue, orange)(red, green)(purple, yellow).

Colour Context

Context is the use of colour to evoke emotion. Different colours mean different things such as white (purity), blue (wisdom), purple (royalty), red (love or anger) and yellow (happy). This helps people associate a certain feeling to a certain brand or product that companies make.

Colour Harmony

There are 6 types of Colour Harmonies: complementary, tetratic, analogous, triadic, square, split complement. Complementary is colours opposite to each other on the colour wheel. Tetratic is a colour scheme with 4 colours in the shape of a rectangle. Analogous is a colour scheme that uses 3 colours that are close or next to each other. Triadic colour schemes use 3 colours in the shape of an equilateral triangle. Square colour schemes use 4 colours in the shape of a square. Split Complement colour schemes use 3 colours: one colour then 2 colours slightly split apart on the opposite side of the colour wheel.

Colour Harmony

Include a heading “Colour Relationships inspired by Joseph Albers Homage to the Square” and an introduction explaining the task.
For each square, include a subheading and an introduction explaining the colour relationship.
At the bottom, explain why having an understanding of colour relationships is an important aspect of design.

Having an understanding of colour relationships helps to make the viewer invoke feelings you try and portray or convey through a design. It helps to draw the viewer’s eye to a certain area in a design which you want to highlight or make stand out and adds interest to a design.