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OUGD404 - Design Principles - Colour Theory - Part 1

Over the christmas holidays we were asked to bring fifteen objects of a given colour to take part in an exercise when we got back. I was given orange.
It came to light that we were going to be creating our own colour-wheel out of all of our objects. We all went to our allocated areas and started organising our objects from more red to more yellow to blend the colour wheel.



Here are some photos to show what we did:





I also made a with my phone to show more detail of the things that were included:


In a group of six, each of us had to think of a selection of questions that we have about colour.
Mine were:


  1. How does the colour black make you look slimmer?
  2. What is more visually impacting, black and white or complimentaries?
  3. What is the worst colour combination imaginable?
  4. Does actual temperature have an effect on colours through light?
  5. Does colour age/fade?
  6. Can both light and ink combinations make a new colour format?
  7. Is there a more appealing colour in general? or is it personal?
  8. Is tone the most important factor of colour?
  9. Do small particles of colour create new colours?

Then we read them out to each other, and made a list of what we thought were the best. 

  1. Is colour more, less or equally important than typography in graphic design?
  2. Is black a colour?
  3. Why do people have favourite colours?
  4. How do colours make us feel different things?
  5. Why do natural colours fade?
  6. How/Why do colours trigger different emotions?
  7. What's the best light to look at colour in?
  8. Which colours look best together of them all?

Then we had to pass the questions onto the next group, and our task is to answer another groups set of questions which were:

  1. What is the difference between tint/shade and hue/tone?
  2. Is it possible that there are colours that exist that the human eye cannot process?
  3. How crucial is it to learn colour theory?
  4. Is colour theory learnt or instinct?
  5. Does it affect the way you see colours when looking through a certain eye?

We shared out the questions, and I answered number 2.


Is it possible that there are colours that exist that the human eye cannot process?

After going off from what we learned in our colour theory seminars about how colours are perceived by the human eye with rods and cones with the source of light wavelengths. I looked into how complimentary colours interacted with each other. 



With this chart you can see the visible spectrum split into two strands of red and green, and blue and yellow. As the positive and negative responses come together they actually cancel each other out instead of forming a yellowy blue or a reddy green for example.

I did some further research on this and found an article on a science website about these colours which do actually exist but can only be seen in laboratory conditions. This is because they are within a wavelength that isn't actually visible to the human eye.

So the answer to my question is yes, it is possible that there are colours which the human eye just can't actually see.

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