Design Principles - Brief 2 - What is a book?: Colour Theory

Colour Theory

I decided to look back to colour theory so that I could consider my colour choice for the pages. I re-looked up what certain colours imply and how this is appropriate or could affect my design.

Orange

Orange is the colour of social communication and optimism. From a negative colour meaning it is also a sign of pessimism and superficiality.

Yellow
In the meanings of colour in colour psychology, yellow is the colour of the mind and the intellect. It is optimistic and cheerful. However it can also suggest impatience, criticism and cowardice.

Green
Green is the colour of balance and growth. It can mean both self-reliance as a positive and possessiveness as a negative, among many other meanings.

Blue
Blue is the colour of trust and peace. It can suggest loyalty and integrity as well as conservatism and frigidity.

Indigo
Indigo is the colour of intuition. In the meanings of colours it can mean idealism and structure as well as ritualistic and addictive.

Purple

Purple is the colour of the imagination. It can be creative and individual or immature and impractical. 

Turquoise
The color meaning of turquoise is communication and clarity of mind. It can also be impractical and idealistic.

Pink

The color psychology of pink is unconditional love and nurturing. Pink can also be immature, silly and girlish.

Magenta
In the meaning of colors, magenta is a color of universal harmony and emotional balance. It is spiritual yet practical, encouraging common sense and a balanced outlook on life.

Brown

The color brown is a serious, down-to-earth color that relates to security, protection and material wealth.

Grey
From a color psychology perspective, gray is the color of compromise - being neither black nor white, it is the transition between two non-colors.

Silver

Silver has a feminine energy; it is related to the moon and the ebb and flow of the tides - it is fluid, emotional, sensitive and mysterious.

Gold
Gold is the color of success, achievement and triumph. Associated with abundance and prosperity, luxury and quality, prestige and sophistication, value and elegance, the color psychology of gold implies affluence, material wealth and extravagance.

White
White is color at its most complete and pure, the color of perfection. The color meaning of white is purity, innocence, wholeness and completion.

Black
Black is the color of the hidden, the secretive and the unknown, creating an air of mystery. It keeps things bottled up inside, hidden from the world.

I decided to look at purple as it is meant to be the colour of creativity and inspiration. However Black on strong purple just doesn't look good. However white on purple works quite well as you can see with the title change below but I still think the black on white is better, it reminds me of Jamie Reid style design.

As you can see the blue compared to the purple, I think the blue is best as it is clearer to read and nicer and more interesting to look at.

The teal worked well but it appears too dark and dulls down the article and makes it look boring.

The red I think is too garish and harsh contrast. It makes the white hard to read and distracts for the rest of the article.

The green is too bold and just makes the article look grim. 

I decided that I would have a look at magenta and see how well it worked with the layout. I thought it actually worked well, it was bright and attention grabbing but not too horrible to look at. However the one thing I did find was that the black didn't look good on it. I decided to change the type to white and this worked a lot better as it gave a good contrast. I decided to try it on a few pages and I am now torn between my original blue and magenta. My only concern is it may be too 'girly' and put certain people off reading it or imply something different from what it is.