Color Transforms

Color is an essential instrument in a designer and artist’s tool box. The way color interacts with each other is a key component in making a design and masterpiece attractive and appealing to the eye. The way color interacts within a given space can produce a sense of balance for a piece of work, color can give the product a finished look and harmony.

Josef Alber's Book, Interaction of Color

In Josef Alber’s book, Interaction of Color, Alber takes on the challenge to explain the complexities of color, stressing the importance of balance in a composition of color. He illustrates the importance of each example with another illusions of color – how color behaviors in relation to other colors and shapes.

Example of a color wheel from http://www.realcolorwheel.com/tubecolors.htm

My most favorite illusion is the strange and captivating interaction between complimentary colors. Complimentary colors are pairs of colors that are opposite in hues in a color wheel. In color theory, complement colors are only truly complements if, when mixed together, they produce a neutral color, such as brown, gray, white or black. For purposes of art and design, the traditional set of complimentary pair colors are white and black, red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and violet. Thus, a complimentary color is usually a primary color paired with its secondary opposite.

Complementary colors from http://www.artsparx.com/color_complementary.asp

The combination of complimentary colors in art and design is aesthetically appealing. The contrasting hues between red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and purple is attractive due to its bright warm tones juxtaposed against cool colors. Each of the complimentary colors pop out against each other, making one another appear much brighter, standing out as pure and bright colors. The contrast presents a balance of dark and light colors that is engaging to the viewer. In fact, because the colors are in high contrast the colors are especially stimulating when placed and designed correctly in an object, if not the process can be overdone and hard to look at, or ignored due to its lack of color.

Albers uses examples like complimentary colors to teach us that colors can work together harmoniously if the designer or artist presents their work in a logical and organized fashion. If so, color can be used to the designer's advantage to attract wanted attention. Thus, color is a equilibrium, too much color is over stimulating while too little is too bland.