Now it's very rare to see a design that only contains one color in its color palette. 1
Now of course there's predominant colors and subsidiary colors. But very often when you're designing 2
anything either for print or for digital, you're going to need to combine different colors. And there's 3
different ways that you can go about doing this to make your designs convey different messages. 4
So let's look at some of the ways in which we can use the science of color theory to combine different 5
colors for your designs. 6
So here we've got a color wheel. 7
Most of you will have seen it from-- most of us have seen it from art classes. 8
And essentially the rainbow wrapped around itself. And the color wheel is an incredibly useful tool not 9
just for artists but also for designers. 10
So let's look at one of the ways in which you would combine different colors. 11
So for example if I wanted to pick an orange color to have in my design, how would I combine it with 12
a different color to complete my design? 13
Well one of the simplest color palettes is going for what's called an analogous color or an adjacent 14
color. 15
This is where when you take one color on the color wheel and combine it with the color that's immediately 16
next to it or adjacent to it and you get an analogous color palette. 17
Now analogous color palettes create designs that are incredibly harmonious and easy to look at. 18
So this is something to think about when you're designing app background screens or the main interface 19
of your app. 20
Because unlike that color yellow that we stared at earlier on, it's not so demanding on your attention 21
and it's pleasant to look at for a long time which is what you're hoping for when you make an app because 22
you want them to stay within the app as long as possible. 23
So the opposite of analogous colors is when you take one color on the color wheel and match it with 24
it with the color that's directly opposite to it. 25
And this is called complementary colors. 26
Now complementary color palettes produce extremely clashy designs that stand out, that grab your attention 27
and can be good for logo design or attention grabbing screen shots but they don't make very good color 28
palettes for your main interface. 29
You don't want to be staring at clashing colors all the time. 30
So how can you tone down the flashiness of complementary colors? 31
Well you can take one color on the color wheel for example red, 32
and instead of going for its direct opposite in which case it would be green here, 33
you can split that color into its analogous colors namely a sort of limy yellow and a light blue. 34
Now by having a three color palette like this, you end up with designs that are still attention grabbing 35
but are less classy and easier to look at. 36
And I'm a huge fan of using split colors for app icon design because you're going to keep it very simple 37
and it's going to be mostly shapes and colors and split colors allow that app icon to stand out in the 38
app store without being incredibly clashy. 39
Now what if you want to take that concept even further? 40
Well you can pick one color on the color wheel and draw an equilateral triangle that links up to other 41
colors. 42
And what you end up creating is a triadic color palette. Now triadic colors tend to be quite well balanced 43
and yet still attention grabbing. 44
But the important thing about triadic colors is that they were pretty much over used during the 90s 45
in traditional print design and advertising design. 46
So a lot of the color palettes look very 90s 47
and when you look at these two designs here they look very much like fast food chains from the 90s. 48
So it's a color palette that feels a little bit dated. 49
Now what's very modern at the moment and very in vogue is the idea of monochromatic colors. 50
So taking the same color and combining it with either various amounts of white or various amounts of 51
black to create different tones and shades that stand out from each other. 52
Now of course you can mix in as much white or as much black as you like in order to provide as much contrast 53
as you need. 54
And these color palettes tend to be incredibly contemporary and work really well for modern digital 55
design.