Color

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Defining Color

Of course, most people believe that they already understand what is known as color. We are surrounded with visual stimuli that use color as a means of attracting our attention for enticements, warnings, evoking emotions or giving context.

We describe it with language and associate it with physical feelings such as sadness, fear or anger. Yet, we are often stymied when attempting to apply color to our educational material. Our color choices come out looking garish or just distracting. This is because we are not attempting to understand how color could work for us in a situation, but instead attempting to mimic something we may have seen before, or thought we saw. In order to understand how to use color in our materials, we need to look at it critically, not merely as decoration, but as an asset as important as any sentence, sound or image.

Forget what you think you know about color and attempt to look at it as a tool for empathizing important assets or ideas, or providing a stability to design that lends comfort and a sense of continuity for your users.


Additive and Subtractive Color

Color is basically a representation of visual light that our eyes perceive as it is reflected from an object towards us. This applies to everything you see. It would seem, then, that the definition of color would be fairly universal. However, the definition depends on what you are looking at. For the purpose of discussion, color, or its perception by the human eye, is broken down into two groups: additive and subtractive. Additive color is when colors in the form of light are emitted from a radiant source. Each color added intensifies the brightness of the color. Subtractive color defines the perceived color of pigments used to color physical objects. The greater number of colors combined, the darker the pigment and the perceived color becomes.

For instance, if you are looking at your computer keyboard, that is considered subtractive color, while the images on your video screen are considered additive color. Confusing? Just remember that RGB values are typically used when looking at electronic material, and CMYK values are typically used for printed material.


RGB and CMYK

RGB is the default terminology for additive color on you computer monitor. It stands for RED,GREEN and BLUE. Layering these colors one over the other creates a brighter, albeit different color. CMYK signifies subtractive color, as produced by pigments of some type. It stands for CYAN, MAGENTA, YELLOW and BLACK. The K represents an additional black pigment, because CMY produce more of a muddy brown than black when combined.


The Color Wheel

Color ranges are often represented on a wheel, with RGB (or Red,Yellow,Blue) or CMYK values along the perimeter, and intermediate colors between the primaries. For example, on a simple RGB wheel, the red, green and blue primary colors are spaced so that they are equidistant from each other, forming the points of a triangle, and the shades of their adjacent colors between them


Complementary Contrasting and Analogous Colors

The terms complementary, contrasting and analogous, are often used incorrectly when referring to colors on a color wheel. However, they have quite specific meanings that can easily lead to confusion if used incorrectly.

Complementary colors are traditionally considered colors that are opposite one another on the color wheel. For instance, red and green, yellow and purple, blue and orange. Contrasting colors are those colors from opposite segments between the primaries, such as orange and purple, and analogous colors are those that are next to each other on a color wheel, such as orange and peach.


The Theory vs. the Philosophy of Color

In working with color for electronic content, many people confuse the "philosophy" of color, in which colors evoke predictable responses in the viewer, and the "theory" of color, in which colors create an appearance and improve visibility and color. Anticipating how anyone will react to a color ignores the visual, cultural, and perceptual differences of the audience. A certain percentage of every human population perceives color differently or in a more limited manner than the rest.

Also, the cultural background of your audience impacts how they react to colors. Different colors have different historical and cultural meanings to different peoples. To make the assumption that the emotions evoked by color are consistent to all audiences is spurious at best and does not aid in producing on-line learning material that may be viewed by a culturally diverse audience.

You can, however, attempt to select groups of colors that provide good contrast between the elements that we wish to present and still complement each other to appear coherent and unobtrusive to your audience. Through the proper application of color theory and adherence to color schemes you construct based on a color wheel, you can make attractive as well as informative learning material.


Some Basic Rules to Apply

All of this theory might not seem directly applicable to your learning material, but consider the intent of what you are creating: clear and attractive content. This also means clear and attractive, though unobtrusive, surrounding elements for your content. Navigation, highlight boxes, backgrounds, information boxes, narration boxes, and other additions need to be considered in terms of color as well. Considering all of these elements might make you feel overwhelmed. But, as you need to start somewhere, consider these basic rules:


Choose One Color

That's right, just one, preferably one that is a muted shade, or darker version of a primary color, so as not to overwhelm your audience. Then create more shades and tints, or lighter versions of that color, around the initial one. This is known as a monochromatic approach. And though you will be adding two other colors to it, black for shades and white for tints, it makes color choices far simpler, while allowing you create clear and visible content.


Make Your Text Dark and Your Background Light

Notice the text you are reading now? What makes it so visible? It is dark on a light background. This contrast makes reading simpler and clearer for your audience. Some people actually prefer light text on a dark background, but the majority of people are used to seeing dark text on a light background, so it is an accepted color standard.

Never put text and a background of the same color together, unless they are of greatly differing shades and tints, and even use these sparingly. Not only are these close combinations too stressful for most people to read, but varying types and degrees of color blindness could make the content invisible to a portion of your audience.


Try Not to Use Contrasting Color

Effective use of contrasting color is difficult to achieve and should be avoided for most learning content. Adjacent, contrasting colors in an RGB model, such as on a computer screen, create a blurring and unsettling impression of motion to most peoples' eyes. It distracts the learner from the content.


Stay Consistent in Your Color Usage

If you decide that call-outs or items of importance will be bright red, and clickable links will be yellow, then continue that through the entire presentation of learning content. If, after you have displayed navigation instructions, or worse yet, have no navigation instructions, you randomly change colors of important items, your audience will become confused. We learn to accept colors as visual indicators like shapes and motion; they can hold meaning and guide the audience if used consistently.




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