Commentary: The study of color and how it’s used revolves around the simple concept of color wheels, which help to explain visually how color is created from either light (RGB) or pigment (CMYK), and how the relationship between different colors comes about. We normally represent a color wheel as, surprise, a circle with distinct segments progressing through 360 degrees. Alternatively they’re shown as gradated tints of merging color, familiar to everyone as the color picker incorporated into many applications, where color is more saturated at the outside edge. It’s sometimes also shown as a strip, as in the color picker in Photoshop. The important thing to note is how a color wheel is structured: red, yellow, and blue—the primary colors—form the three main spokes of the wheel. These colors are blended to form secondary colors: orange, green, and violet. Blending primary and secondary colors produces tertiary colors, and so on. Complementary colors are those that sit directly opposite one another on a color wheel, for example primary blue and secondary orange. TS

Commentary: Hue (another name for color), saturation, and value (or brightness) are the three components which combine to form the multitude of colors we see around us every day. Saturated colors are strong or vivid; desaturated colors are grayer and can be mixed by adding either black or white pigment (or more or less light) to pure hues such as the primary colors. Value is the measure of how dark or light a hue appears compared to black or white. It all sounds a bit scientific unless you try to simplify it, so try squinting at a standard color wheel. You’ll notice that the brighter colors like yellow stay brighter because they already have a higher value relative to black compared to, say, dark violet. Another good way to illustrate this is with the color picker on a Mac. Saturation is 0 percent (or white) at the center of the wheel and 100 percent at the outside edge. The slider to the right controls the value with 100 percent brightness at the top and 0 percent (totally dark) at the bottom. TS

Commentary: Color models can also be referred to as color spaces and are all important when it comes to maintaining color consistency in a workflow when combined with color profiles. They’re all about mathematics but don’t worry, you don’t actually have to do the math yourself. The models that most designers will recognize are RGB and CMYK. These are device-dependent models, meaning they’re designed to facilitate color reproduction on devices such as monitors and printing systems. They also have a limited color range—known as a color gamut, so some colors produced with these models aren’t always true to the original, but are governed by whatever device you’re looking at or printing with. Device-independent models, on the other hand, mimic the way our eyes perceive color so are technically more accurate to the original. LAB is the most common model of this type and has a much larger color gamut than other models. It’s popular with designers that do a lot of color correction because it can separate an image’s luminance (or brightness) from its color. TS

Commentary: One of the great advantages to using an integrated suite of design tools is the fact that you can create similar (or similarish, at least) working environments when switching from one to another. The Adobe® Creative Suite® is particularly good at this and pays special attention to the synchronization of color settings for different color models or working spaces through a centralized function in Adobe® Bridge. It also allows the user to synchronize how applications treat images as they move from, say, Photoshop® to InDesign® or Illustrator®. Why is this important? Well, it’s unlikely that you’ll be using Photoshop® to design a layout or InDesign® to create a complex vector illustration, and if you can’t rely on consistent color when moving between applications there’s really no point in paying any attention to the colors you choose to specify, as your final results won’t be predictable or consistent. It’s not a creative process as such, but color consistency is extremely important if you want to see color proofs and final output that’s a close match to what you’ve been looking at on your computer screen. TS

Commentary: Did you ever wonder why you can create an amazingly vibrant red onscreen but can’t seem to get it to print out with the same kind of intensity of color? The reason it’s not possible to translate certain colors from screen to paper has a lot to do with color gamuts. A color gamut represents the complete range of colors that any one color model is capable of producing in print. It also represents the complete range of colors that a device can capture, as with a camera or scanner, or a display, as with a computer screen. Screens use the RGB model to display color, and an RGB gamut is larger than the CMYK gamut used for four-color printing. This is why you can’t print that amazing red with CMYK—it’s outside the CMYK color gamut. Spot colors like Pantones are not dependent on the CMYK color gamut as they’re mixed from pigments, so a much brighter red can be achieved if printed as a spot color. This is true of many colors limited by a CMYK gamut. TS

Commentary: Rendering intents help to address the issue of the RGB gamut being larger than the CMYK gamut by controlling what happens when colors are converted from RGB to CMYK. There are four rendering intents to choose from and each produces a subtly different result, which may or may not suit a project’s needs. Perceptual attempts to preserve colors by compressing them into the CMYK gamut, so tends to alter most colors and can reduce saturation. Saturation keeps colors that can be produced using CMYK but changes out of gamut colors while attempting to also preserve saturation. This can cause significant color shifts so isn’t great for color critical imagery. Absolute Colorimetric keeps colors within the CMYK gamut intact and converts out of gamut colors to the closest possible hue at the expense of a little saturation, but can produce a slight color cast in white areas. Relative Colorimetric is the default for most uses as it’s similar to Absolute Colorimetric but also adjusts the white point, thus reducing color casts. If in doubt, always go for Relative Colorimetric. TS

Commentary: Color is subjective and emotional. It is challenging to convince someone to like pink if they were repeatedly locked in a pink closet as a child. This makes color one of the most problematic elements designers use. Added to the subjective nature of color is the way we see color. First, we all experience color in our own way. Warm red will appear different to every person viewing it. To one person it looks orange, to another red. It is vital to be accommodating when dealing with color. Telling someone they are wrong about a color choice is to tell them they are a bad person. If these hurdles were not high enough, color changes according to its environment. What seems to be a soft yellow in the designer’s office can be an awful yellow-green under the client’s fluorescent light. The primary colors, red, blue, and yellow, are the most consistent in different surroundings. Complex colors, such as violet are more volatile and easily shift from blue to purple. When showing color options to a client, it is best to explain that color changes in different settings. SA

Commentary: Attracting attention requires volume. This is true audibly. When you want a friend across the street to see you, you shout, “Hey, Dick! Over here.” This is true physically. Slamming a freshman against a locker will get their attention. And it is true visually. Stop signs are red and have large type. Beige is not loud. Beige, gray, and tan may be sophisticated and classic, but they are not good when competing for attention. Beige is like a silent killer. It will slowly creep into a project. The image may feel too bright, so it is desaturated. The type color seems too bold, so it is softened. The final result is an overall beige tone. Online as a website it is beige-green on some monitors and looks boring. As a poster it hangs unnoticed by passersby. Do not fear color; do not retreat to the safe, quiet, and deadly world of beige. SA

Commentary: There are easy and obvious pathways to creating emphasis for a bit of type in your layout. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are always the best avenue to accomplish that, though. Much in the way that a highway can provide the quickest trip to your destination, it can also dull your senses to the trip itself, and when used too often, become clogged and slow and a worse option than doing nothing at all. The simple bold may be your reactive selection when trying to highlight a word or section, but take time to consider color as well. Using a color to bring out a repeated phrase or word can be hypnotic; using a slash of red to create terror over a phrase can add tension. There are so many powerful tools at your disposal; with just the tiny click of adding a wash of color you can forever change the viewer’s perception. JF

Commentary: One of the true glories of the silkscreen explosion of the past decade is that it exposes more and more designers to the joys of overprinting. As process color has become increasing affordable, trying to do so with spot colors on an offset job via overprinting, duotones, and other tricks seems to be going by the wayside. But you should never forget that you always have more colors on hand than the cans of ink bought for the job would indicate. Watching inks printed over the top of one another, whether it is Bradbury Thompson’s famous CMYK experiments, or your current favorite gig-poster artist, allows us to see how the inks change one another and create a multitude of effects. From the straightforward third color that comes from making a green by printing a blue over a yellow, we can see a totally different effect by printing a darker gray over the same yellow, yielding a subtle shift to a deeper gray in those areas. Oh, the possibilities! JF