Colour in Design

Colour In Design.  13 April 2024

As I walked through Glasgow City centre on Saturday, I was struck not only by the beautiful buildings in our city but just how colourful it was. The beautiful eye-catching window displays in the shops in Buchanan Street and the stunning street Art dotted about the city, this got me thinking about the importance of colour in design and what using colour helps to achieve.

Some may think that the use of colour is an easy aspect to apply to design, but it is far from it, and poor colours choices applied to a design can make a design lack harmony and confuse the viewer. Other times colours can be combined to shock or create interest or break from the norm on purpose to create discussion, and intrigue.

Colour has many connotations, in culture and in psychology, with it influencing our emotions (moods, thought and feelings) and what we purchase in some cases. As such, colour is a powerful aspect of design that it would be foolish to underestimate its importance.

In 2008, I remember seeing ‘Stary Night’ in the Musée d'Orsay (Paris) and was blown away by the vibrancy of the blue and yellow colours, more recently (2018) on trip to Amsterdam, I visited the Van Gogh Museum, and was amazed to see an aged and faded picture on the wall – a ‘colour wheel’ having been painted by Van Gogh to help him decide on colours for his painting. Perhaps he used that very wheel help him decide the colours for Stary Night?

But it is thought that the first colour wheel was invented by Isaac Newton in 1666, because of his experiments with light and prisms.

So, what can colour do for our designs? I would say that one of the most important things that colour can do for our designs, is capture the eye of the viewer and help to keep their attention. The most recent portrait of King Charles is mainly painted in red; it is certainly able to capture attention! And was a bold choice of colour by the artist.

In these prints by David Hockney and the Bauhaus poster, the use of the complementary colours - blue and orange, typify how colours opposite each other in the colour wheel can create high contrast, energy and a vibrance to the design, in addition to being visually interesting, these colours can at times be conflicting but overall, the visual tension can be captivating.