5 Secrets to Using Color in Design

Col­or the­o­ry can be an incred­i­bly inter­est­ing and pow­er­ful way to enhance your mes­sage. This will be part of an ongo­ing series of posts, so keep check­ing as we share more. To help you get start­ed, here are 5 killer secrets to work­ing with col­or that will help you make bet­ter choic­es when select­ing col­or. It’s like a lit­tle cheat-sheet — make sure to book­mark this page to keep it handy!

Col­or has the pow­er­ful abil­i­ty to make us aware of what we see and feel. It can inspire awe, peace, or even make you hun­gry!  Our per­cep­tion of a col­or can be affect­ed by their hue (iden­ti­fied by the name of the col­or), its inten­si­ty, and how it inter­acts with its sur­round­ing ele­ments. Col­or is explained both sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly — from how your brain process­es the infor­ma­tion, to how our reac­tion to col­or is influ­enced by our cul­ture, expe­ri­ences and preferences.

1. Color is a critical aspect of any design. As a matter of fact, that is the FIRST thing our eyes see.

We must remem­ber that our choic­es can enhance or affect how the col­or inter­acts with the ele­ments of design. Avoid using so many col­ors as it can dis­rupt the visu­al flow — your eyes won’t be able to trav­el across you mes­sage if you have a rain­bow of col­ors all over the place.

The exam­ple below has too much col­or. The back­ground could work on some instances but the col­or­ful type on top of that makes  your eyes feel over­loaded with col­or. You expe­ri­ence a rain­bow of emo­tions and not in a pos­i­tive way. You just sim­ply end up con­fused about where to look. BOOM — that’s what your eyes expe­ri­ence when look­ing at the image below.

2. The medium in which you use color can affect the way it’s perceived.

You may be in love with how a cer­tain col­or looks on the screen, but when you see the print­ed ver­sion it can look a lit­tle — or a lot — dif­fer­ent. There are ways to work with lessen if not solve that.

There are three main col­or num­ber­ing sys­tems: Pan­tone Num­bers (PMS) and CMYK val­ues for print, HEX and RGB val­ues for the web. There are oth­er sys­tems that are used in the sci­ence and indus­tri­al world but for our pur­pos­es, we’ll stick with the main ones.

If you haven’t heard about PMS col­ors, they are spe­cif­ic col­or val­ues that are used to get an exact col­or match. This ensures that the col­or for all uses across the board remains con­sis­tent with the orig­i­nal design. PMS col­ors in print are also referred to as spot col­ors. Using them — say you want to use 5 PMS col­ors —can turn out to be very expen­sive as a result.

The col­or mod­el CMYK – or four col­or print­ing – refers to the four inks used in vary­ing per­cent­ages to cre­ate all col­ors. They are typ­i­cal­ly applied in the order of the let­ters: cyan, magen­ta, yel­low, and key (black). CMYK is great for print­ing and the most cost effective.

HEX and RGB are ways of cod­ing col­ors to be read by var­i­ous com­put­er lan­guages such as HTML, so it will trans­late your design col­or val­ues accu­rate­ly as viewed on the web. RGB lit­er­al­ly stands for red-green-blue… and those three pri­ma­ry col­ors, vari­ably added togeth­er cre­ate most oth­er col­ors. Each HEX and RGB val­ue is assigned a six-dig­it code that indi­cates how much red, green and blue should be ren­dered to cre­ate a spe­cif­ic output.

“The whole world, as we expe­ri­ence it visu­al­ly, comes to us through the mys­tic realm of col­or. Our entire being is nour­ished by it. This mys­tic qual­i­ty of col­or should like­wise find expres­sion in a work of art.”

So remem­ber: If you are using an office print­er to review some­thing from the screen, you won’t get an exact col­or match. And, it will look dif­fer­ent from an ink jet vs. a laser print­er. You can try cal­i­brat­ing your print­er to get a slight­ly more accu­rate read­ing. It won’t solve the issue, but it can help. Some print­ers will have an option to print a ref­er­ence col­or chart that includes the CMYK values.

If you are only plan­ning to use CMYK and RGB val­ues, check out this fan­tas­tic tool from Adobe Kuler.

3. When working with similar colors be cautious, as they can blend together and cause your work to look muddy.

A way to test if your col­ors blend is to squint your eyes as you look at them from a dis­tance. These col­ors will look like they turned grey. If they seem to be the same val­ue, you may want to con­sid­er select­ing anoth­er col­or that will have a bet­ter con­trast. Don’t be dis­cour­aged at the idea — It can be well worth the effort to do that exper­i­ment to solve this.

4. Understand that there are psychological and cultural factors that can influence how color is perceived.

Don’t under­es­ti­mate this! If you are try­ing to tar­get a par­tic­u­lar mar­ket, doing research will help you under­stand what col­ors will work and what won’t. Let’s say you are cre­at­ing a cat­a­log that fea­tures beau­ti­ful brides from dif­fer­ent cul­tures. Your mes­sage is talk­ing about brides being hap­py in their beau­ti­ful white gowns, and you include an Indi­an bride wear­ing white. This ref­er­ence would cre­ate a cul­tur­al clash because in India it is believed that a bride wear­ing white will invite sor­row. While the brides may have been born and raised in the USA, many will stick to their tra­di­tion­al wed­ding cus­toms. Con­sid­er this aspect a pro­fes­sion­al skill to devel­op, as impor­tant as the oth­ers you have honed.

5.  Establish harmony.

Using col­ors that incor­po­rate hue rep­e­ti­tion can cre­ate uni­ty in a design. You can estab­lish this by either repeat­ing the col­ors with­in the design or by adjust­ing the val­ue of the par­ent col­or — pink may look dif­fer­ent to a red, but it is still a shade of red.

Col­or is every­where. If you are feel­ing stuck on how to cre­ate har­mo­ny, the best source of inspi­ra­tion is found in nature! There is a rea­son why you feel this amaz­ing sense of awe when you see such amaz­ing col­ors on a sun­set! God was an artist!

Work­ing with col­ors can be tricky but it’s so much fun! Don’t be afraid to let your cre­ativ­i­ty thrive and take risks when you’re in the cre­ation stage. Some very hap­py acci­dents can hap­pen! We’ve got more to say on this top­ic, so come back to read more on col­or on our blog.