Introduction to Color

We've been looking at and talking a lot about type in class so far, but another very important element in good design is color. Everyone should read over these articles carefully on their own and be ready to talk about it in class on Tuesday. In addition to these articles, you can also jump ahead in the Digital Foundations text to chapter 5 and read what they have to say. There are several color-based exercises in that chapter as well that we'll execute in Illustrator once the computer issues are fixed in the lab, so you can give those a preview, too.

Smashing Magazine's Color Theory for Designers is a great, three-part article that covers just about anything a beginner (and beyond) should know. A bonus in the third part of the series is a great tutorial about creating your own color schemes based on the knowledge you now have about color.

(Note that the links to all three parts of the series are located at the bottom of the page of the link above. You should definitely read all three, plus whatever else you stumble upon on the Smashing Magazine website. It's a great resource! Its focus does tend more toward web design, but there is still plenty of information that you can apply to the things we're studying in class, especially if you click on the "design" header at the top of the site.)

The Color Wheel (click to enlarge)

This series of articles about color is good reading as well.

Stuck on what colors to use in your projects? Try getting inspired by paintings throughout art history. This site gathers 35 color schemes analyzed from paintings, like this one:

James Tissot, Croquet, c. 1878