colour-1

“In visual perception a colour is almost never seen as it really is — as it physically is. This fact makes colour the most relative medium in art.” Joseph Albers

In establishing what the first of many tasks with a client last week it seemed that a natural place to start was editing their immense colour sheets. They had created the full spectrum of colours, signed them of with The Board and then used them throughout their publication – almost – at random. After a long chat it seems obvious this was one of the best elements we could be working with.

Since developing numerous HTML templates with some very talented coders I can now see that the units we use to create flow and change – that have so many options and subtleties in print – are reduced to a minimum in digital templates. Colour is probably the main element. Type the second. Clever and elegant graphic colour systems achieve the same thing great type does: bring a product alive in ways that we can’t always immediately describe but we instinctively know is an intrinsic part of what are experiencing.

Having said all that I can’t begin to describe here the kind of work I get into when I build such a system – partly as it is always in answer to a brief rather than a one-size-fits-all solution, but also because its is a mixture of being systematic and, err, artful. You have to make some subjective choices no matter how many informed decisions you already have. Also, the bigger the system the exponentially harder it gets.

Briefly surmised: The very least you could say is that any system should accommodate either complimentary sets, chromatic sequences and/or cultural and contextual decisions. That’s a simple start. I think colour is a missed opportunity in too many products I see day to day and being systematic is the only way to create functional solutions.

Joseph Albers studies in colour at the very least tell us that colour experience is only ever relative. That, plus cultural decisions and constantly changing screen values makes it an impossible art that we have to accept as one of our never ending tasks. I have always, subjectively, rather enjoyed it.