Monday 6 November 2017

The Power Of Colour - FutureLearn

This is a four week course which I completed through the FutureLearn website. The content of the course covered the basics of understanding how colour works and the physics behind how the eye functions. As the content developed, a range of topics were covered and has provided the foundations to the research project looking into colour.

Notes from Course:

People:
Sue Timney 
- Interior and product designer
- Familiarizes use of two colours and then adds in more tones 

Johannes Itten
- Researcher in the field of colour, colour principles and colour combinations/contrast
- Taught at the Bauhaus in 1919 to 1922

Joa Studholme
- Farrow & Ball's in house colour specialist
- Fashion trends have a major impact on setting colour trends
- Colours have become softer, reflecting the hardness of technology that we are surrounded by in our everyday life

Tom Chivers
- Colour psychologist
- A brief glimpse at the colour green prior to a creative task has been shown to enhance performance
- Colours carry different meanings depending on their context
- Colour symbolism, deriving from our conscious associations, is a conditional response

Julia Begbie
- Munsell colour system
- In the eye, prolonged exposure to light of a particular colour will temporarily reduce your sensitivity to that colour. This is called neutral adaptation
- Harmonious scheme is colours that are close to each other on the colour wheel


General:
What is colour?
- In order for a human to see colour the necessary components are: 
1. A coloured object  2. Full spectrum light  3. The eye to reflect collected light  4. The brain to process the information from the eye

- The colour sensation received in your eye varies with the wavelength of life. Different colours = different wavelengths

- The colours that a human eye are able to see is called the visible spectrum.

- Optical or visual illusions are caused by information gathered by the eye being processed in the brain to cause a perception that does not tally with the actual physical measurement of the viewed object.

Opponent - Process Theory:
- The photoreceptors in the eye are linked together in opposite colour pairs. Blue & Yellow. Red & Green.
- Activation of one member of the pair inhibits activity in the other
- The photoreceptor cells in your eye respond to the primary colours of the additive system; red, green blue.

Hue and Saturation:
- Hue is the description of a full value of pigment
- Saturation describes the amount of pigment present within a colour
- Hue + saturation affect our visual hierarchy (the other in which we see things and their impact)

Colour Symbolism:
- The language that a person speaks can affect the way that a person perceives colour. This may be an interesting topic to explore further within this research brief. It would provide a direct focus to the brief.
- All languages recognise black and white
- If a third colour is recognised it is red, fourth yellow or green
- Climate can also affect our colour preferences
- Sunny climate = warm, bright colours
- Poorer light climate  = cool, low saturation colours

The Impressionist (1870-1880's)
- Experimented with the idea that the shadow of an object can be made up with dashes of its complimentary colour


Where do my colour inspirations come from?
- Nature
- Travel
- Society
- Culture
- Fashion

Concept and Colour
- When working on a brief/project, extract colours from a photograph that conveys the mood in which you would like to take forward in the design outcome. This is a method of practice that would be interesting to experiment with in future projects. 







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