(Week 04) Discussion; Color, Medium, Materiality
Introduction
Here's some concepts we're going to cover today.
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Color → Persumably you know what color is, but important, technically to this discussion is "color space" which is the way that colors interact physically in the case of light or pigment or mathematically in the case of Photoshop or similar.
- Additive / RGB color → This is when colors add together to produce white. That is to say, red, green, and blue have separate values, and (0,0,0) is black and (255,255,255) is white.
- Subtractive / CMYK color → This is when colors mix to produce black. This is, or is intended to simulate, how crayons or printer inks interact. The colors involved are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (K is for Key, as this plate in printing was traditionally used for "keying" or registration/alignment).
Note that RGB generally has a wider range of values and images that are super saturated will generally look "duller" if converted to CMYK. For this reason, you should know what color mode or medium you are ultimately aiming for. You'll notice when you use the presets in Photoshop they are roughly divided by "print" and "screen" categories which are generally CMYK (print) or RGB (web/screen).
Color also has the power to create illusions of depth and hierarchy through how colors interact. See the first document for examples of color. It also allows you to create variations with different tones and "feelings" to the image.
There are a number of ways to describe colors
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analagous → closer in hue (ie blue, green, and teal)
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complementary → farther in value (blue and orange, or purple and yellow)
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triadic → color proximity based on triangulation on the color wheel (red, blue, yellow or purple, orange, green)
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hue → the specific kind of color pigmentation (ie a blue hue, or red hue)
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saturation → how much of a hue is added to a color(very gray or desaturated to very bright or saturated)
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value → the "light or darkness" of a color from relative to black or white.
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temperature → the perceptual "warmness" (red) or "coolness" (blue) of a color.
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Materiality → refers to the quality of your image, or the objects therein. With respect to graphic design, this might have to do with the printing method used to create a given image. For example metal type might be "softer" or more spread out compared to the sharpness of digital type on a laser printer. A photocopied image might be rougher, less clear and lighter than a jpeg from a phone on a computer screen.
Materiality also has cultural associations:
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a scrathy wood texture might communicate rusticness.
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a smooth metallic texture might be used to convey austere or cold technology
- You might, for example want to recreate or simulate a specific material quality for your compositions, here are some tutorial examples:
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Medium/Format → Medium refers to the mode an image communicates through (poster, animation, website, comic books, animation, etc.) and format refers to physical substrate through which it communicates (CRT television, screen print, etc.)
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Visual Hierarchy → Is how elements in a composition are arranged to produce different visual effects. Of note, and most distinct in the handout is the notion of compositional flow. That is, how elements are arranged in a composition, and how they guide (or don't) guide the movement of the viewer's eye.