Color Stories: Coding with Color
Color as information. It seems like a strange concept -— that is until you give it a little thought and realize that color alone can tell us which direction to turn the tap for hot water, what bus to get on for the route you need to take and even the gender of that newborn baby. For these reasons, color selection must be done carefully and with a good deal of forethought.
The author says that color coding is only affective when it is done simply. This allows the viewer to easily and quickly identify the systems and know what it means. This simplicity is achieved through using a minimal number of colors as well as using colors that are very easily distinguishable. Colors need be different enough to let the viewer know that the information is different. Close color combinations, however, can be useful in indicating sub-categories. For example, a set of health related brochures may have eye related pamphlet colored blue, the ear and nose related pamphlet colored green and the heart related pamphlet colored red. Then the pamphlet on high blood pressure pamphlet could be pink, tying it back to the heart pamphlet.
When planning a color system, the designer needs to leave some flexibility for growth and change. Also, the different parts of the system need to be distinguishable from each other while still holding on to the “family appearance.” This can be achieved by developing a family with a few colors in it and a few staple elements and then swapping these the colors of these elements. This allows the different parts to be distinguished as different but also be recognized as connected. Take for example, Herbal Essences hair care products. Each shampoo is tied to its corresponding conditioner by using the exact same bottle color, but they are differentiated by bottle shape. Then all of the different types of shampoo/conditioner combinations use a different, but very saturated color that ties them all together and unifies them as a whole. The are all connected, but easily distinguished as different.
When selecting a color system it is important to consider printing costs and the number of inks to be used. Where many color jobs will be process jobs — printed in CMYK -— it is also possible to get very similar results with just two, carefully selected spot colors. A spot color is colored ink with a specific color. This using a limited number of inks helps tie all elements printed with them together, helping further with branding. For this reason, spot colors are often used with corporate identities.
Since ink is translucent, these spot colors can be blended in different tints in order to create a number of different colors. This color overlap is called “surpinting.” When colors are created through surprinting, the resulting colors vary greatly in hue, saturation, and value. These variations are based directly on the base inks selected. The end, third-party color is usually darker and less saturated. However, the author says, if the base colors used are fairly vibrant this will result in a more intense third-party color.
This use of spot colors can also have some pretty cool affects on photographic images, especially those with higher contrasts. An image can be printed with one, two or three spot colors (color halftone, duotone, and tritone, respectively) in varied distributions to create an almost innumerable number of different looks and feels.
Source: "Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual" by Timothy Samara
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