Utilising colour effectively can be crucial to effective design. Human naturally associate certain colours with emotions and concepts, these connections are formed from the cultures that you are raised in such as red for heat or love and black for death or hate in western cultures. What I find really interesting is how different cultures relate certain colours to different emotions and ideas.
The rules of colour theory can be used to find pairings of colours that work well together which can help create aesthetically pleasing design. The main three types of colour combinations are:
To explore using different types of colour combinations I used a basic UI on an iPhone 14 screen and experimented with using different arrangements of colour.
This was a useful exercise to begin to see the possibilities of colour in UI design.
Interaction of Color by Josef Albers is a really fascinating book documenting the various ways colours interact with each other. It demonstrates the psychology of how we perceive colours when arranged together and how that translates to day to day life. I can see how it is extremely important as designers to understand the interaction of colour as it permits you to manipulate the mind into seeing what you want the viewer to see. The knowledge of how a single colour interacts with it’s own tones and other colours is incredibly useful to me and will be something i keep in mind going forward.
