Using the colour wheel in design

Colour is one of the most exciting and important elements of design. Whether it be design for the web or for print. Colour can be used to add tone and spice to your artwork, depict a certain mood and highlight areas of your page or screen. You can normally judge the appearance of the artwork and the thought process by looking into the colour choice. Colour can give the artwork its place in its surroundings. Just as we judge our surroundings, we judge websites or printed artwork by its design and colour and therefore what gives it a look and feel. We can almost certainly work out what the website is being used for by it’s colour, whether it is for fun, corporate business, or a certain age group.

It is possible to have an idea of appropriate colours for certain briefs and solutions before even starting. This is often described as colour intuition developed through good use of the colour wheel. Every time in design, the colour wheel is taken into account in one-way or another. It is important to design your website or print artwork to draw the eye of visitors, not just to your work, but to the many important things contained in your design. Colour is used as an important part of doing this. This should be done by not just covering the page in didn’t colours and tones but using maybe one or two splashes of vibrant colour for the headings or sub headings. Colour simplicity is very important but often forgotten about. To many colours or the wrong combination of colours will make the page tough on the eye and therefore turn visitors away, but not enough use of colour will make the page look bland and achieve the same outcome.

The basic principles of the colour wheel are used to put colours together in harmonious colour combinations. The colour wheel is made up of the primary colours, red yellow and blue, the secondary colours, purple, orange and green (made by mixing equal amounts of 2 primary colours) and the tertiary colours, which are yellow-orange-, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-purple, red- purple and red-orange (made by mixing unequal amounts of 2 primary colours). This colour wheel will help you work out which colours can go together. For example complementary colours are opposite each other on the colour wheel, red and green, yellow and purple. These opposing colours create maximum contrast and maximum stability. Analogous colours are three colours next to each other on a colour wheel, such as red, red-orange and orange. Usually one of these will stand out. A monochromatic colour scheme uses various darker and lighter shades and tones of a single colour in the wheel. 

Check out our online portfolio to see the ways in which we have used colours while designing our ecommerce solutions and website designs.