Color Theory: Get Inspired by Color!

1. ColorTheory - Introduction: Hey, I'm Syrah and this is my first course color theory. Get inspired by Calum in this course I want to share with you some of the knowledge I have gained in the almost 20 years I've been a graphic designer from the basics of the color wheel and the psychology of cholera in branding, giving out of your Color rock. But some useful tips on getting inspired and creating color combinations that work join may get inspired by color. 2. ColorTheory - The Language of Color: Hey, welcome to check the one language of color. You have probably seen a color wheel before and heard of terms like complementary colors, tints, shades or time. But you may not know exactly what they mean or how they help in working with color. In this chapter, we take a look at the color wheel and the color rules or harmonies and how they are applied to successful brands. You will gain an understanding of how to create color combinations that work. We look at the basics off. The color systems that designers and developers use in print seem like a screen RGB as well as hicks codes. In the Pantone color system, we take a look and Adobe Illustrator, the program that most designers used to create logos and brand exits. You'll see how easy it is to apply the rules of color to your at work. Using their tools, I have a class project putting together a mood board for two of the color harmonies. We can then share those and together create a great resource off color combinations. Join may get inspired by color. The beginnings of the color wheel was invented by Isaac Newton, who met the color spectrum onto a circle. He compared the color hues to music to discover the harmonious relationship between each year. These are today known as the Color Harmonies, a set of rules to help create color combinations that are pleasing to the eye. Artists and designers use color wheels regularly as a tool to Mex determine and pick colors with confidence. We're going to go back to basics now so that you can refresh or learn some of the theory. When we jump into Adobe Illustrator, you will see how the tools and pellets relate. The typical at his color wheel is made by mixing pigment or paint, and shows the relationship between primary colors, secondary colors and tertiary colors. Let's take a look at the primary colors in the color wheel. Rid blue and yellow. These colors cannot be created by mixing any other colors together, so if you were going to buy paints, then these would be the good ones to start with, as from here, you can mix the secondary colors purple, orange and green. The primaries of Reading Blue make a Sikh indri color off purple reading. Yellow primaries make orange, yellow and blue make green to sri colors are referred to as red, orange, yellow, orange, yellow, green, blue, green, blue, violet and red violet. The importance of the color wheel is were these 12 Hughes certain relation to each other is That's how we get Alcala harmonies. And those, my friend, are what help you choose killer color combinations. So let's start with complementary colors. Colors opposite one another on the color wheel blues, complementary calories, orange and reds. Complementary color is grain. I know what you're thinking. These colors seem to clash well, they dio. These color combinations are high, in contrast, because they're separated the most on the color wheel. They create drama intention and are highly visible. Many many brands use complementary colors, games to great effect for that very reason, but they often use one of the colors as an accent, or they alter the value off the colors, its lightness or darkness. Crispy cream does this by choosing a dark green. This has been achieved by mixing in black, which reduces the tension warmer uses bright, medium blue with yellow as an exit. Heineken does the same, using mostly green with an accent of read. This is a more subtle way of using a complementary color scheme where you choose one color to be more dominant. Compound or split compliment trees are a variation on the complementary scheme were in addition to the base color it uses to adjacent to its complement. So three Hughes. These are vibrant and bold combinations, but they have a lot less tension than the complementary colors. Triad colors are three colors equally spaced around the color wheel. These colors games tend to be punchy. Burger King as a great example of a well no brand that uses this color scheme to prevent your design feeling too busy, though it's a good idea to use a dominant you with the other colors as supports. Our next harmony is T trade four colors evenly spaced on the color wheel. This color scheme is bold and eye catching, but again they work best if you let one color dominate and use the others as accents. Google uses a tit trade harmony but uses a lot of white space with the four colors working almost as accents. Before we move onto the next harmony, I want to show you how the color wheel can be divided into warm and cool colors. Warm colors, other colors from red through to yellow and are seen as active colors. Cool colors are the colors from blue to green and purple and the described as passive colors. Every color evoke certain feelings and emotions, which I cover later in the chapter Psychology of color Analogous colors. This is a popular color harmony in brains. It's a color scheme made up of three colors next to each other on the color wheel. The's color schemes are often found in nature, and it's a very easy and reliable way to create visually appealing color combinations. I often take photos when I am out and about in nature, and they used the phone app Adobe capture to create color schemes from my photos or I simply bring the photo into illustrator and use the I drop it. All analogous colors are very similar to each other, so that create a sense of cohesion very much the opposite off complementary colors which create contrast intention. An example of a cool, analogous color scheme used by a brand is PayPal. An example of a callous game using warm, analogous colors is MasterCard with your decorating a room, designing a brochure or picking out an outfit using analogous colors creates a sense of balance and calm, monochromatic, callous games that even more soft and subtle than analogous colors. Since it's a color palette based on one single color, Starbucks is an example of a brand using a single color for the very well known mark. They have reduced the complexity of the mark and the callous game over time. They now effectively own that green color to create different tents, tones and shades of a single color. We need to change the value, which is the colors, lightness or darkness. We do this by adding white, black or both tents. A one color plus white, which increases the Hughes Lightness shade is one color plus black, which increases the Hughes darkness. Tone is one color, plus black and white so gray and that just set your rights the here. So now that we know about value, let's go back to our complementary colors off green and read. There are not many people who would put these together without altering the value of at least one off the colors to reduce the tension a bitch so here. I have kept the read as is, but I've added black to the grain, so it becomes a shade. Now add an attempt of that same color, and as you can see, we're starting to build a really nice color scheme based on the complementary color principles. Now let's see how it looks When added to the at work, we're going to look at the color systems used in both digital imprint. You need to understand the basics of RGB seem like a and the paint own callous system to help mix color and illustrator for your print or digital projects. RGB stands for red, green and blue and refers to a tele mixing system combining the three primary colors of light. Blue Editor Green added. To read, creates white. Imagine three stage lights shining on top of one another. The light would be stronger or whiter in illustrator or other Dobie programs. We use color sliders like this one to increase the amounts of red, green or blue in a color. For RGB, the light levels work from zero meaning no light. I E. Darkness 2 to 55 meaning the maximum light or white. You can see the values used to create this pink using the color palette and Adobe illustrator Seeing My K stands for science Magenta, yellow and a key color black C M I K. Should be used in offset and digital printing. For example, full color brochures. Flyers, posters. You may be familiar with these colors from your home printer. It works like pigment and that the more color you aired of science magenta, yellow or black, the dark of the color becomes. When using black, you can use 100% off the key color black. Or you can create a rich black by adding in a percentage off sigh in magenta and yellow. Most designers will use a rich black, which gives more dip and darkness. Let's look at the C M y que values or color breakdowns. This works in percentages over color, so from 0% no color to 100% of a color. So let's have a look at that pink again and see him like a. It contains no science, 49% magenta, 3% yellow and no black hicks. Values can be used in CSS and HTML and other software to control the color and screen based media. They are always six digits long and use the hash symbol. You will see this below the RGB sliders and your dopey program. You have probably heard of the Pantone matching system. It is an amazing tool which completely changed the printing industry, allowing for the selection and reproduction off accurate color anywhere in the world. The system organizes color standards through a numbering system so you can select the number through a kala palette and Adobe Illustrator. The best thing about Pantone is that you can refer to the various Pantone books and find the best match and RGB, C, M I. K and Hicks codes. This is the most accurate way of choosing your brain colors and reproducing them across different media. In the next video, we're going to look at how Adobe illustrator integrates color theory into its color palettes. 3. ColorTheory - Creating a Color Scheme: Hey, everyone, I'm now in Adobe Illustrator. And as you can see, I have opened a finished mood board, which is what we're going to put together by the end of this. Lisa. When is based on the analogous color principles, which we now know a three Hughes next to each other on the color wheel. The other is complementary, so colors opposite each other on the color wheel, and needs can often be quite intense, like reading green, blue and yellow. But when used correctly, they can create wonderful color combinations. For this exercise, we're going to choose three colors and either a tent or a shade to give a bit of depth to our colors. Game. I am using images for inspiration, which I have sourced online via Pinterest or Google. I love these tight I'd neck ins in this drone shot from above and on the complimentary. I found this really beautiful vintage like bolt picketing. You can choose anything that you love. It may be an outwork by your favorite artist, a fashion shock, some vintage packaging, anything that strikes a chord and jumps out at you from there. We're going to use the I drop it'll to select colors from the images and experiment with a few off the color palettes and illustrator and create some quick and easy color combinations. So pause the video, jump online and gather some images into a folder and we can get started. Welcome back. You should have your collected images by now. So let's open up the class file called SETI mood boards and get started file open navigate to your course files and open C T C one great boards. Double click. Okay, I just want to make sure we're all working in the same workspace. So go upto window on your top toolbar, workspace and essentials. If this has already checked, uh, go to reset essentials and it will just put for your palates back into a nice, orderly fashion. So we're all working from the same place and you can follow along with May. We're now going to import and place the images that you have sourced up to file in place. Now you need to navigate to the folder that you saved your images into. At this point, I'm just gonna click on one and hit space bar. These are all the images that I've collected and as you can see, needs a full might analogous kind of palate. So I'm gonna select those neck wounds so you can either click and drop. I'm just gonna commands it dead. Wow. Place Or you can click and drag if you click and drag. It's much easier cause often the images can be quite large. So you can simply resize by holding down shift and pulling from the age of your banding box . I'm gonna bring my next image in while place This time I'm gonna bring into it's gonna slicked on my 1st 1 I'm going to hold down command on my neck and select my second image and hip place. You know, I'm gonna click and drag, kick and drink. I'm going to do the same now for my complementary principles file in place, I think and drag. - Okay , once you're happy with the placement off your images ID like it is, select one of these circles over here that I've created. And then, while that selected click on your eye, doctor. But you can also exist by pushing or selecting I on your keyboard. I'm now going to come out onto my image and just click, and you can see that it fills with color. We're now going to go upto windows in color and we're going to get out. Fisk color palette out. So here we have calcium like a breakdown. If we go out to the fly out menu, we can see we can total between gray scale RGB and see him like a calamari. We can also create a noose watch, which will mean that this watch will now sit into us watches, color palette to be able to be exist again and again. Another really interesting thing here is that you can select the compliment off that color . Well, here, I don't even have to reference Alcala guide. The other thing, that is way more exciting. Is this tape here the color guide. So this little square of color out to the side is your base color. So the color that you want to base your color harmony on. Now if we go down to this drop down menu. Hello? Hello? Hello. What do we have here? It's our color harmonies. No need to reference that color wheel. It's all here. Look at these color combos. That's right, folks. you have ALS, that color theory right in here. So just below we have our color harmony here, and then we have to the right the tents. So variations towards white into the lift are our shades. So in variations to black, If you go out to the fly out menu, you can also choose a kind of temperature. So the warmth and call off the tele so it takes it based color in the harmony, and it adds blue to the right and read to the left. But how beautiful is that out to show vivid and muted. So this decreases the saturation towards gray on the lift and increases situation and variations to the right. So also out in this flout me. New is safe color s watches. So that will simply save this color harmony to your swatches palette so you can use it again and again. So let's have a look at selecting a different color for our next circle. So I've moved on to my black arrow and I've selected my next circle along. I'm gonna move on to my eye dropper and I'm gonna select that blow so you can see on the color guide. It's starting to flip and change, depending on what color is here. In which color is sit is my base color. How lovely is there so you can see how easy it's going to be A. To create great color combinations. I'm going to continue filling in my circles here until I get a combination. I really like. I think this is starting to look quite good. One thing I could do is create this cream as a tent off this, you hear? So we can do that in a few ways. We can slick that as our base color, and we can look at the tents from here. So that's looking pretty similar to what I've got here. So I can simply select on there. And unless you click on there as a base color again, it'll allow you to select that tint, which is brilliant. This could be a shade off this color, and I'm just going to show you a different way off adding black to a color. So I'm gonna select that same color by going to my eye, drop it all and just selecting it. Then I'm gonna go into my seem like a values and I'm simply going to and a bit of black. I'm pretty happy with it. I'm now going to just taste how they sit next to each other by adding the color to this square, selecting the color, going to I for my eye dropper and then selecting the color. I think that it's looking really nice. What I'm going to do for your benefit is add the hicks codes to each off these colors. I'm gonna double click on my fill copy, say OK and then simply paste in that hicks cart. Select on my next color DoubleClick copy. Say okay. In paste creams conveyed notoriously had to reproduce when you go to print. So with all of your colors, you would want to check them out beforehand and do a couple of teeth sprints. It's gonna change that toe. What? It's into the one. Okay, so now I am pretty happy with that. I'm going to move on to my analogous principles and do the same thing. I think I want this color to be a tempt. So I'm going to see how those air looking I'm now gonna add Ah, the hicks codes for each of these because I'm really happy with that color scheme. The case. As you can see, I've created to Kallis games here, one that works with the analogous principles and the other that works with the complementary principles. So I hope you enjoyed that. It's a nice, easy way of getting together some quick colors games. 4. ColorTheory - The Psychology of Color: color is a complex subject and can have vastly different meanings from one person to the Knicks. We all have a favorite color or certain feeling or association board on by color. It can halt around mood and how we respond to a piece of design. It can drive us to purchase a product. It is part of our every day language. Cala is powerful. So how do we use that power when picking colors for our clients? Colors that are not just on trend or look pretty, but carry a message or attract attention. By the end of this chapter, you should be armed with enough information to communicate to your client the reasons for your color choices rather than them saying I like blue. Make it blue. This is a look into the more common meanings of color. This could be different between cultures. So if you're working on a brand that will operate in different territories, just make sure that you look into the color and its meaning for those countries. So let's that with black the very darkest color owing to the absence off or complete absorption off light, we know that black is required for all other colors to have that dip and variation of hue. In Western countries. Black is the color off morning death and sadness. But it's also the color off authority and sophistication Hi. In fashion labels and luxury goods brands use black appeared with the latest season or color trains. It's often seen as a neutral color, much like white when used in branding. Black is timeless and elegant. Exclusive, bold and simple. Yellow. So yellow is a happy and friendly color on the warm side of the color wheel. It evokes feelings of positivity and optimism, and it's also associated with knowledge and wisdom. Yellow is one of the colors that your eye absorbs first, so it's often used to grab attention. Brands that use yellow can often be seen as cheap and cheerful, so it's important to think about the other colors that you peer with. Read is an act of color. It's a color which evokes strong emotions. Think love, passion. Anger is also associated with danger and power. Many successful brands use read. Think virgin, Coca Cola, Levi's. It's used across all sectors, from sports and entertainment to food and drinks. It's a color that creates desire. Blue is a cool, passive color. It's very well used in the corporate world, often peered with grays and silvers. It is a color of trust and loyalty. It is conservative and dependable. We can have that blows, which a kind of more traditional, stable and reliable. Or we can have like blues, which evoke feelings of calm, peace and serenity. Industries, which typically use the color blue in their branding, are finance, health care and tick grain. So Green gives off a feeling off authenticity. It speaks of openness, growth, renewal. A light green gives feelings of harmony and balance. Ah, bright green could be innovative and youthful. While a doubt green often a votes, feelings of wealth, status and trust, it is often used by banks, environmental and not for profit brands. When you were choosing color for brand, it's often a really good idea to think of your brand as a person. So try and think of how they would act, what they would were if the outgoing and the life of the party. You're probably not going to dress them and black or brown, but rather colors on the warm side of the spectrum or you might include pops of bright color. Another important question to ask yourself is what the other brands use in the same industry. So what colors do your direct computer tests years? You could either choose to follow suit or you could disrupt the category. So take ICO cleaning products, for example, they are more often than not green. A consumer who wants to buy an ICO product will stand in the aisle of a visually overloaded supermarket and probably look for a mental short cat to the color grain for a green product because it's kind of a rule of thumb that for that category. But the category might have lots of ICO products, and it's becoming more and more common, so you might choose to go for something, which is a complete contrast to stand out. There is a lot to think about when choosing color for a brand and color theory is often an overlooked area off design, as designers often choose colors using the intuition. But it is important to get it right for a company to effectively own a color, and that sector can provide an enormous competitive advantage, achieving instant recognition and in some cases. Even without a logo, see if you can guess these brains. That's the power of color when done right? So I have put together a printable PdF for you on the common meanings of color. You could refer to this when choosing colors for your next brand. We're going to do a class exercise next and Adobe illustrator choosing a range of colors for a cafe. 5. ColorTheory - Choosing Colour for a Brand: we're now going to put into practice some of the things that we have been learning about by choosing a color scheme for a logo and supporting iconography. So I've created these in Adobe Illustrator using simple shapes and lines. Let's open up our file. So file open, navigate to your course files folder and we're gonna open C T C three, workshop one. Just say yes if you're ah, have a little dialog box that comes up about the scaling. As you can see, I've set up a worksheet. We have a very small brief and some values for the company. So we need to think about what we've learned in the psychology of color and put that into practice. So I'm just gonna zoom in holding space, birth and command an independence into important offering a full range of gan supplies, including florist composting workshops in a cafe with garden and market kitchen, the values we care about so quality products, sustainable practices and friendly service. We are independent in community focused. So already you might have some colors that you think will work right away. So greens, for example, will give that feeling of growth. They mention friendly staff. So perhaps something warm, like yellow or mustard is a florist, So I automatically think off reds and pinks for romance and love and the independent. So I'm probably not going to go for more corporate feeling colors like blue, for example. So already you're starting to build a color palette that feels right for your client and adheres to their values. You may pick some primary colors, and by that we mean the main colors for the brand in seeking DRI colors, which are supporting colors so the main colors may sit in your master logo and then the secondary colors you might use throughout your iconography end in your website and things like that. So if I think about nature plants, landscapes, there's many shades or hues of green with pops of color. So perhaps that's a good starting point. So we might look at some monochromatic color, so one color with some shades and tents or analogous color scheme, Um, perhaps with a few pops of color or contrast in color. So let's make sure that we're all working in the same workspace. We're going to go upto window on your top tool back trickle match. Then we're going to go toe workspace and then you'll see. You may have a check on any one of thes workspaces. Let's all go toe essentials. If you've already got a tick next to essentials like I do, then you can go to reset essentials. This just re seats your workspace. If you're anything like may, it can get a little bit crazy. So let's have a little look around on and see what's happening within this document. So at the top here, we've got the document name and how big I'm viewing it currently. And then you can also see here, RGB. What I'd like you to do is change from RGB to see him like a because this is gonna be eventually, say, a brain style guide. And it's gonna be printed so we can do that by going up to file document color mode. And you can see there I'm currently checked or ticked on rgb color, so I'm simply going to click on C M. Y que. This is one of the things that new designers often stumble on as they may do their entire design and RGB mode, and then they get very different results when it comes to going to print, so they may create a poster. They get it signed off by the client, who's viewing it on a pdf on screen. And then, when they get the poster back from the printers, the colors away Dullah. The reason for that is that you have a smaller color gamut with print, so let's open up past swatches palette. First, we're going to go upto window and all the way down. Luckily, this isn't health Alphabetical order to swatches. Okay, so from this palette, you can do loads of stuff. But it's often the place where you find yourself hovering about trying to find some inspiration. Sometimes it can be hard to get started, so it contains a bunch of default color swatches, and you can also toggle here between the fill color in the stroke color, and you can also double click on that to access your color picker. From here, you can move through ALS the different hues you can see the sea and, like a break down here. The RGB breakdown and this here is your hicks code, which is a number which starts with hash, and that's often used for with so over here on this fly out menu. If we click that click and hold, we can see from here we can create a new callous watch a new color group, which just means you get a little folder. We can duplicate an existing swatch Delete us watch selectable unused that something that you might do at the end. When you're cleaning up your files, Ed. Use colors, all sorts of things, but right down the bottom here, you can see open Swatch Library. Now this has been around for absolutely ages and illustrator, and not many people often bother going to it or when they go to it. It's purely to get the Pantone color books, which will talk about a little bit later. But within here are some pre made color combinations, so these kids stuff food, earth tones. There's those default color swatches, and we've also got nature here, so this could be a good place to start for a project. I'm going to go down to landscape and you'll see a little palette opens up with these little folders here with these color combinations in it, which have already been created. And there's some great ones here, so that's seeking one down, for example, I think is really lovely. This is kind of fun. So to place these into your swatches palette, you simply just have to click and you'll see that they show up here in your swatches palette, which means you can then close that down and just work from your swatches palette. So when you get a bit of time, have a look in your open Swatch library and you can see these art history these court approach. Let's see what they have for corporate lots of blues and reads, Yeah, graze. So that's a really great place to go and just get started because sometimes that's the hardest Bert. And then you might see a color that you like, say this grain. But you want a tweet kitsch so you can double click on it and you can, you know, darken it up, for example, adding in a black that a black what's really great within the Swatch options area and we'll do this when we choose our colors for our iconography is to click on global. So by clicking on global, we're asking illustrator to change all of the colors that Ah, in this color. So if I decided but later or the client says the greens maybe could be a bit darker, or could it be a bit more of a blue green? What we can do is go back and change this watch here, and it will update ALS the artwork that uses that color. So I'm going to click on Global and say OK, and you know that a swatches global because it has this little watch triangle in the corner . So if I was to now, click on this Randall and say, for example, this one and this tree and I filled them all with that color If I double click on it and go here and I'm just gonna cheek my preview one, you can see that it updates all off that at work. So that's a really handy thing to know, because often when you're choosing colors, you may crack on with the design and think, Ah, work with the colors a little bit later. Once I know what's gonna sit on were, and that's when it's great when you've had the torch toe chick that global. Okay, so I'm going to say I might move that back to but more of a green and say OK, so next we're going to look at the adobe color themes, palette. Now, this is amazing. This is going to give you so much inspiration. It's a big sheared database of callous games tagged with every possible word you can imagine s o we're gonna go upto Windows Color Fame's. And if you're signed into your adobe, Logan, uh, you will see here at the top, create, explore, end my themes. So to start with, we're going to click on explore. You may be there already, and depending on if you tried to tinker around on this before you might have some sort Cher's here. Or if you haven't, you've got this little sort. Sich excuse May Search box. You can simply type in garden head for 10 and you start to get these fabulous colors games . Now anybody can create these colors games. You, too, can create colors, color themes and make them public, and I'll show you how to do that a little later, later on. So he's some beautiful colors, games that are kind of ready to go. What's great about this is, you can add them directly to your swatch palette so you can click on those three little dots and you can say antis watches so you can use that again as a starting point to create your new color scheme. The other thing that is pretty fabulous is that this entire thing sits on the World Wide Web at adobe color dot com, and you can literally go straight there by clicking on those three dots and clicking on view online, so that will crank your Internet up and eventually take you to the adobe color. So this is basically a larger version with a a lot more like you could do a lot more in the online vision than you can in the palate, but they kind of worked together, which is really fabulous. So this gives May. All of those colors that I liked tells me the name copy of Gavin shoud. So somebody has taken that. Perhaps they've taken a photograph outside, and it's, you know, the rust, perhaps, and flowers and the greenery that tells you who is by. It's, uh, got a few things down the side here, which will have a look at But it's also got the Hexter codes, which you can a copy directly and take them into any adobe project. Sorry, any adobe product. What's fabulous and, as you can see here, is new as it gives you the Pantone references. Now this is really awesome, because as a designer, you're often having to find Flick through these Pantone books, trying to find a match for the colors that you've got onscreen or printed out from your digital printer. So this gives you a pretty good place to start to go and find those colors. You can then download those which is great and add them straight into your program. So here you have download as an A S E file. So this means that you can download a little file. It's called Adobe Swatch Exchange. It means that you could send it to another team or a team member or colleague who might be working. Ah, perhaps, and photo shop, um, or also an illustrator. But putting together some other assets for the same brand. You can share those between yourself and between adobe programs, so that's fabulous rather than often calling across the office. See, fifth day, I am 35 reading out the seem like a values. So I'm gonna click download as an HSB file and you will probably get a little dialogue box . I'm just gonna click to save that file. I'm gonna say OK, and that either safe's to your downloads folder or you may choose where that goes. The other thing I want to show you. Um, so here we've got create using thing. So along the top, we've got create explored trains and my themes, and I'm gonna go through these but say we quite like this. But perhaps, you know, we're not sure about these two colors or we might want to tweak them slightly. We could do that in the program, or we can go here, create using thing. So I'm going to click on that. And what have we here? We've got a color, Will. We've got a lot of values down here currently in RGB mode. So I'm going to click on that and change that to see him like a and you can see that will the sliders change? But what have we got here? These are our color harmonies. Well, this makes it easy So here we have all of our color harmonies. What this is is, uh, so at the moment, this is our base color. It works in the same way as the color guide and that you have to sit the boast color and then it will choose a harmony around that color. Eso say, for example, I really loved this green. Ah, then I can work at the moment. It's a custom color. Then I can work through these different, um, color rules. Oates, I was sit. I didn't see it my base color. But see, I Well, not to worry. I'll choose eso Let me just choose that as my base color. And then I should be able to from that color, create the harmonies monochromatic so they'll be along this blue green. Analogous. Similar. But we've got sort of moving into some kind of pimply movies. Complimentary. That's quite nice. And browns, So this is a really awesome way to get started. Uh, you can see this little triangle down here, and it's really important you saw May I accidentally didn't click on it. I just cooked on the color rather than the little triangle. If you click on that triangle, the net becomes the base color that these harmony rules work too. What else you can do is simply move these colors around and sort of have a play until you get somewhere where it feels good. The other Really incredible. Ah, option within here. So we're in color wheel at the moment is also to extract from an image. So we need to click on that, and I want you to select a file. Ah, so I've got this image here of a flower, and I think it's gonna be a really nice callup. Alex, I'm loving this sort of pink against this green eso. What you can do is jump online, grab a picture and save it, and then you can simply open it. And right away you start to get a color palette here that is created using the eyedropper tool. So the brown here, this like green. So I'm not sure how those two feeling together, but you can see down the side. There's a couple of options here for creating a kind of mood. Now, this image doesn't have a lot of colors in it, so these probably won't change too much but say if you had an image with way more color options, it'll flick between brights, muted deep colors. So I just have a quick look, so that is not exactly bright. Um, but you get the idea deep, dark, so it tries to search for the darker colors, the more colorful ones. I'm kind of liking that I'm a little unsure of this color Or maybe this color and how those two are working. So I kind of like a mustardy brown. So that's actually a really nice looking color scheme. This is sort of a Blackie Blackie blow or something. But I'm like, try and go for a really dark green and all that is doing is picking up the tiny little pixels within the image. What's great is we can now save this, and it will turn up and out, illustrator my themes in this colors in the palette. So at the moment you can see here I've already got a folder, but I'm going to create a new one, and I'm gonna call it God and Santa Oh, and I'm gonna hit create. So at the moment, that's its name. But I'm gonna call it Garden siento so you can edge tags. So you might say flower that return. Um, I think that's quite a protein. Ah, terrible spelling hit. Enter and you can add these tags and these tags help other people to find your color palette. So at the moment I've got published to color, so that means it's gonna be added toe adobe colors database, which is pretty cool. Then I'm gonna hit save. So as you can say already, this is an incredible, uh, toll that's gonna help you create some really beautiful color schemes. Even if you're a new designer, if you go at the top here, explore this is gonna blow your mind. OK, so not the best design. But here are a whole bunch off Callum pallets, uh, using blues and yellows, but taking them out of images again. If I type something in here like flowers, it'll bring up a lot these color palettes that are related to a flower image, for example, all you have to do is simply download, or you can add to your adobe library. So if you download that will just give you an adobe swatch exchange file. The other option is trains So this takes callous games from different industries and from the creative communities like the Hanse and also adobe stock. So if you want to see what people are downloading or using in fashion at the moment, thes, alas, and great colors games. What a graphic designers going for at the moment. So you can imagine these could be really varied and they're not a specific is searching for something like flowers or garden or landscape. But it's pretty cool place to come to get inspired. Okay, I'm gonna jump back into Adobe Illustrator now by pushing command Ted by adobe color Themes folder And I'm simply going to go to my veins and garden Santa. Here we go. Um, so Oh, hang on a minute. I haven't seen where you I call it Calvin Santa. He said it. Fresh cabin. That was when I ate it, wasn't it? Uh, no, it wasn't. I thought I called it Garden center. My date theaters. Sorry, I lost. It s so there is my beautiful garden centre, and I'm simply going to click on this and add it to my swatches. So here it is in my swatches file, and you can see here that you can go to explore, uh, and create a swell. So it's just a smaller version off what you have online seating that base color using the color wheel and then saving your thing. Now that we have our color schemes, I and feel free to stop the video and have a bit of an experiment with the tools that I've just gone through. Um, but now that we've got ah, those two little folders I'm going to bring in the Adobe Swatch exchange file that we saved earlier. So to do that, we go to the fly out menu on l swatches palette. So go down to open Swatch library right down the bottom is at the library. So I'm not sure where you saved it to. Perhaps your downloads folder that you can use your, um, you can never gate towards your folder, mind me into my downloads. There it is, a e file, and you can see that it opens up and I simply need to click and it'll add it to my palace game. Or you can click and drag and drop eso. I already had head that one from earlier, but you can see that it will add a 2nd 1 And that's quite good, because often you might want to tweak it slightly, But it's still nice to have the original. Um, so I'm gonna close that now. What I am going to do is I'm going to convert some of these colors to global that global color scheme. So I'm feeling like this one here is gonna work for me. So I'm going to double click. I'm going to just check that global color. And I'm simply going to go through and do that for every one of those colors. It's a double click to go global. Say OK. And I'm now going to stop putting um, those colors into my iconography and seeing how they working to give up. So seedlings I sort of think of lighter new growth color. Mm. Supplies may be this Tele could be quite nice. Make that global on because I'm kind of liking that color. I might actually move it into this folder. Uh, edibles. I think it's like bright. So maybe this orange could be called since it's carrot after rule. Ah, trees a quite like the stock. Oh, yeah. And florist I was looking etch this sort of pinky dusty pink color. So this is starting to look quite nice on changed my logo. I think you know the idea that, um, your logo could literally be any off the colors, depending on on where it goes. Um, could be quite cool. So maybe if it's the branding within the florist, it might be in the dusty pink. Or if it's within the supplies area. Maybe it's, um, this kind of gray green color so you can have a little bit of fun with your brand. Um, especially if you keep the S seats and the elements really consistent. You can't have a little bit of fun with McCullough and create quite different feelings, um, for the brand within different areas. So in the garden kitchen, for example, Or maybe in the section off, um, plants with the edibles there the logos always in the orange and that becomes, um, a signifier, that those are edible plants. So color can be a great way off communicating other than you know, words on paper, in images, some actually liking the way things are looking here on maybe feeling like this green might be a little bit dark. Um, maybe. No, it's quite fresh. I think that one is. Yeah, I think that's looking quite good. So I'm going to choose my primary colors or the main colors of my brand. And I think it's going to be quite nice to have, um, to similar colors. So these greens and then maybe a pop of something. So maybe the challenge or maybe that pink. I think the paints quite cool. Um, I've noticed I haven't made their global color, so I'm just gonna double check that that global. Okay, so I'm quite liking those as my primary colors, and then I'll just go ahead and Cilic thes are the colors that I've got on. And maybe I could have a tent off that color. Perhaps. So now that this is a global color, when you open windows and color, you'll see that this here becomes ah, but the original color, this one here and the in the variance towards white. So these become tense. So you can see down here that it's choosing attempt, which is actually really cool. So if I'm just on a regular color which doesn't have the global chosen It just gives me the seem like a breakdown. But if I'm on one of these, it will give me that. The tent, which is really great. It's a nice, easy way of getting a tent off a color, not a shade. Mind you. If you want a shade, you can go to your color guide. So that's windows and color guide. Uh, and you see, I've got that here. Um And if I select that orange and I sit there is my base color. This is giving me my tents in my shades here. Ah, if you don't have that, you can see down on this fly out me new tents, shades warm call, but that needed And warm coal is adding rid to the one side and blue to the cool side And then you get your vivid in muted so you can see it's heading gray on near to the muted side . So at the moment, I'm just gonna go to my tints and shades. Uh, because I'm thinking that it might be nice to have a sort of lighter color. I'm not sure I love the orange. Um, but May bay I choose a cream. Um I might see it. That is my base color and see what that gives me. Yeah, I'm quite liking this out of those two, I think I might go. So that one So you can see that steer now, And I can simply drag it and add it to my folder on a double click on Make that a global color and say OK, so I'm just gonna close that color guide down now. So, uh, I'm pretty happy with how my colors are looking, but it's not until I stopped putting them into my artwork and using them that I'm going to see how they working to give it. And it might be that I feel like, you know, this green maybe sits nicely on here, But perhaps I don't love thes two as much together when they're next to each other. But it's only when you start working that you see, um, that, you see, sort of, you know, some issues that you might have. But for the moment, I'm pretty happy with how this is all looking. I feel like that's a really nice color for supplies. Things like shovels, brushes, water and cans. You know that kind of manufactured, you know, some of that will be steel or what have you? Something that's quite a lovely color. As I said before, this colors, like, really fresh has got that feeling of new growth. What? She knows seedlings, uh, edibles. Well, you know, it's a carrot eso that's pretty self explanatory. Trees get something that's a little bit more mature. So this dark green is working really nicely for that. And then thats beautiful kind of dusty pink, which I think works really nice for the florist. So now that I've got these colors, I'm simply going to pop the hicks code. And here, just so if you guys want to copy that, you can't. So I'm gonna double clock, and I'm simply gonna copy control, see, say okay. And I'm literally going to select and paste That hits code and again. I confessed my here too. Okay. And haste. Okay. Paste. Okay. So you can see that. That that tele Um so it was perfect to that college. You can see that this is sitting within the green, um, cues. So these are analogous colors, and then we've got this sort of pops of contrasting colors in the pink and the orange, so it's important to really check your colors as well. Um, creams are notoriously hard to Mitch to Pantone's on. But what day That you work with your printer to kind of find, um, something is similar. Uh, toe what? You're what you've got there. So, yeah, you just have to become very good friends with your contracts on. And I don't need this one, so I'm gonna delete it. So I've got three primary in three secondary colors. Again, this is a guide only you want to choose your colors now on and put them into your icons and see what you think. The only thing I feel like I could be missing iss maybe another kind of warm color, I guess these to my warm colors, but, you know, maybe a mustard or something. But we'll see when I start with it would be about artwork, So carry on picking your colors. And when you're really move on to the next season, have fun 6. ColorTheory - Applying Color to your Brand : Hey, so welcome back. We now have our colors, or by now you should have your colors added to your brand and iconography. Now we need to see if they are going to work without other assets. So let's go up to file and open. Navigate to your course files and this is going to be your C T C three work sheep, too and open. So I've created a series of simple illustrations which come to give it to create a sort of bigger graphic. This is going to be used for the garden kitchen. It could be a mural, for example, or a graphic on the front of the counter. But it's some simple iconography and illustrations about shopping local, the produce being handpicked in this concept, off farm to market. So next we're gonna be filling in these illustrations with color or color from our previous listen. So, first of all, let's have a look at the moment we're working and see him like a. We want to make sure that we have our layers palette open because I have separated the background squares from the illustrations and then I've got the template here, which I have locked, so there's no need to edit that layer. So most of you are probably familiar with layers and Illustrator, So I'm just going to double click on layer one, and I'm gonna call it illustration. And as you can see, you can toggle on and off those layers. So at the moment, I'm just going to turn off or toggle the visibility off my illustration layer Next up, I want to get my swatches palette. If you don't already have that open and you can see we're working with those default colors . So now we want to bring the colors over from our previous vile. And since we've got that worksheet still open or if you haven't, you can open it. Now it's easy to just copy and paste the colors over rather than saving an ace e file. So I'm gonna click back in tow, worksheet one. I'm simply gonna select over by clicking and dragging with the black arrow tall and selecting those colors. I'm going to go up to eat it and copy. Then I'm gonna go to my worksheet to file, and I'm simply going to go get it and paste. So if, like may you have that I'm attempting to drag onto one or more layers that is locked or hidden. You can see here it's, um it's I'm still selected on the illustration layer For me, this is fine and was going to say yes, and all it does is turn on their illustration layer so I can turn it off again in a minute . So now that I have my colors because their global colors, you'll see that they automatically paste into my swatches palette. I'm just going to show you, if I had our color that was not global. For example, let's say this green here was gonna cut that and paste. You can see that it doesn't paste into automatically load into the swatches palette. That is because it's not a global color. So what you can do is if you've got a whole bunch of different colors, you can literally come out to this fly out menu, and you can create a new color group, and that will ask you from what and you say from the selected at work. So say, if you paste it over, uh, an entire poster just to grab the colors or, um, anything that's not a global color, and you want to quickly add it to your swatches palette. That's how you would do it. And you can even name that group as well. So if I say selected at work, then I say, Okay, it'll end up in its own little folder. Now I'm a bit of a nude, and for some reason I just like to have my colors in a folder. So if you want to try their out by selecting your artwork, going to the fly out menu in New Color Color group and let's call it, um, kitchen also, I Gavin Kitchen getting what? My own design is cooled, and I'm going to say that that is my selected artwork and you can see they all set nicely here now. So I'm just going to turn the illustration layer off just because I want to start building in the color and filling in the color off this background. Squyres so you can simply click and drag, and right away you will see that you've got your Fillon stroke. They're all the same. They got a black stroke with a white Phil. I'm just going to simply click on the screen color, and I'm not gonna ask for none for my stroke. And I'm just gonna start adding in some of the colors. Don't worry. What colors you are filling this with For the moment, we'll work again on balancing everything out and making it kind of work and look good. So you just put some of those colors. And now already, I'm kind of starting to see that this green on orange isn't working very well. So that will be probably something that I I look at changing. Um, but for the moment, I'm just gonna pop some colors and and then I'm going to tune on my illustration layer, and I can stop filling in those colors as well. So I'm gonna fill it and take that to nothing slick the time. Put that into the cream, select my milk bottle. So if you carry on putting your colors end until you're kind of happy with them, then we can look at doing some tweaking. And it might be that we've got some extra colors that we can replace with a shade of a color or a tent of a color. So, for example, this cream could maybe be a tent of this orange all. Really? I'm thinking I'm, like, tweak this orange. Ah, to be maybe a bit more of a mustard color. So I might just quickly do that. I'm gonna double click. And I'm just gonna have a little play around until I Jake on my preview. Until I get a kind of color that I like, um, maybe take out some event, maybe increased some of the yellow, and maybe I make it slightly darker. Maybe something like that quite like that. So I'm gonna say OK, And because I've updated that global color, you can see that where I had that Phil color. It's updated it on my artwork this green. I feel like I like it, but it could be Mm. Maybe it could have a little bit more. The lack of touch. I'm just gonna put my preview one just so that the contrast between these two is not a Z is much. And I'm just gonna ran that off to 50. Some people choose colors, and they just leave it with, like, 20.44 But when you're working with brand guidelines and creating style guides, it's best to make sure you've got round numbers here. Some people get a bit weird about, like doing them to the nearest to like if it's 12 that rather have 15. But, I mean, that's that's kind of is slightly weird to choose your colors in that way because, you know, 2% or 3% of the black could make quite a difference. So it's kind of nice just toe kind around them out. So I'm just gonna put that to 20 and my bet to 95. Um, so maybe it could have a little bit less green and a bit more blue. That could be nice. Ah, maybe skirt 80. Well, and yeah, I'm quite liking. Let maybe this could have a little list. Yeah, it's quite a nice color. So I'm going to say OK. Ah, and that's updated anywhere. I had their artwork selected, so I'm just going to carry on filling in my colors. I think I probably will want this piece of paper was shopping list to have cream in the background. So if you're items grouped, you can either double click on the line in it clicks into that graphic, and then you can change it or you can spend the time and ungroomed each one. They don't need to be grouped together, and then you can just double click out of it. So I'm gonna change this background now that I've made a mustard out of that that what's perfectly for my little bagel. So you condone toggle between your fill and stroke by pushing X on your keyboard. I use a short cat all the time. It's probably one of my most used short cats win working an illustrator. So I'm gonna toggle between the stroke and filled to take off the black stroke so I can push this, which has no stroke, or I can put a backslash on my keyboard and that takes the stroke off. So the little red line back slash is quite a good terms like indicator toe. Jog your memory of that backslash, but I find that a really great short short cut on, and then you can either click back or push X to toggle between to your fill color backslash . So maybe this could be Must did so. This is currently grouped at the moment. Ah, I can either right click and hunger And when I click off, you'll see how the arbiter select the individual and it's and I'm gonna push X on my keyboard and back slash to get rid off the stroke. Or I can simply select no stroke and pink Phil. So carry on filling in your colors. I'm going to speed up this process a little bit. And once you've got everything filled in, um, weaken, do a few other little tweaks. Okay, As you can see, I've filled in or my colors. I'm liking the colors. I just think that this green could actually be a shade off this lighter green. And in fact, this cream could just be a tent off this mustard just to keep the number off colors. Um, you know, a little bit more cohesive. So I'm gonna look at that now, Uh, so that is my mustard color here, Um, this is the same. This is the previous colors that I am I loaded, and then I'd put them into a folder. So, you know, in some cases when you click, it may be either one of those just like them to be the one in the photo. So if I create um, this one to be that mustard color. And then I go to windows and color because these are global colors with that little white triangle. When I select on my color, it gives me the tents. So I recon I could probably do about 15% off that mustard, and it gives me a pretty similar color. It's slightly warmer and slightly more kind of earthy, which I really like. So if I'm happy with that color, what I want to do is now quickly change all of these to be that new tent and the way I do there is I conflict, one of the pieces of artwork and I can go up to select sane fill color. So anything on any of the layers that is in that fill color will now be selected. And I'm simply going to go on to my eye, drop it'll and Cilic that new color. Or I could go and fill the more with mustard and then popped 15% in my color palette. So I think that looks pretty good. I'm just gonna look at this grain now and see if I can find a shade that I can use instead of the stock green or something that would work on and feel a little bit more harmonious. So I'm gonna go to window and Color guide. Um, so currently, I'm on this base color. Hey, I really like this. So I'm in muted, vivid here. And I'm currently ah, in shade. So that was lucky that came up. Uh, it wouldn't necessarily have have come up on everybody's palette, Dean. So I'm just looking down here. I also like this one here within the complementary and this high contrast that's pretty cool, Pops quite a lot. But I want to keep it feeling quite earthy. Eso I think that I'm going to go for this shades after all. And I'm simply gonna choose this color here. I think that's really nice. So I'm going to add that color to my swatches. Seiken, simply click in drag. It's gonna put it down here. I'm gonna double click and make it a global color and chase in case I change my mind, which I have done a lot. So I'm going to select that current green, and I'm going to select same full color and I'm simply going to click on that new green. Okay, so I'm pretty happy with where I've got to on my mural. I'm really loving along the connections. Eso I'm loving these colors together. These two are sitting really nicely. Everything feels like it's connecting. Um, really nicely. So what I can do now is update these here with my new colors. Maybe you chose great colors in the first place, and you don't have to. But if you're anything like me, um, yeah, you're gonna need to update. So I'm just gonna select some of those colors and I paste over to my new file and you'll see they end up here, and I'm just gonna pop these out to the side A za Another thing you can do is simply select . Go on to your eye, drop. It'll end. Cilic that new color really quickly, uh, onto my black arrow by pushing V on my keyboard, selecting I for my eye dropper and filling with the new color. I think the pink stayed the same yet I like this blue. I'm gonna keep that in for supplies. Uh, it doesn't have to have appeared on all the artwork and more so I'm now going to update these hicks codes. Select and delete this Cole. Now I'm really liking how that's working, so it's pretty incredible that you can start with something that you feel really happy with . It may be that you spoken to your client since theme. They didn't love the orange. Maybe they wanted something a little bit more earthy. So this mustard is perfect eso when you're working with color because people obviously have their opinions. As we found out about the psychology of color, you can now say, Well, I've chosen this mustard because I think it's got this really lovely clay feeling it doesn't feel, um, it doesn't feel, um, too bright. Everything feels quite harmonious. Next up, we're gonna look at tuning this master logo into a Pantone color. So to Pantone references one for the cream and one for the grain. So stick with me and we'll find out all about the Pantone color system. 7. ColorTheory- Choosing Pantone Colors: Hey, everyone, we're now going to take out brand logo, and we're going to find a pen tone colorful the green and the cream. So if you want to follow along with my file, um, in my colors you can open the finished file. So the C T C three worksheet to finished. Otherwise you can carry on with your, um, color. So I'm going to select that logo. So I just simply dragged over the top, uh, in the Indy selected by holding shift the bottom background. And I'm simply going to go eat it, Korpi. Then I'm going to create a new document so file and you and I'm just gonna make a four landscape for the moment. Oh, I think I'm gonna about paste. And I'm just going to resize that by holding shift, which keeps the perfect constraint. Okay, So when choosing Pantone colors, um, it can be a little bit difficult to find exactly what you're looking for. The reason why you would choose Pantone colors is if you were going to do some limited color. Um, Prince. So maybe you're printing this logo onto a mug. Ah, a T shirt. Or perhaps you're doing just a two color business card or you may even do one color, and this is knocked out and showing the paper cream paper underneath. So there may be times were your client wants a Pantone, um, reference for your logo, and it's kind of a standard thing to do. If you're creating a style guide for your client, you would give them the RGB breakdown for if they ever doing in the think say in PowerPoint for on screen, you would give them the hicks code. They may be working with a developer that you're not connected to. You would also have those seem like can and Pantone references. So first of all, from your good old swatches hell, it, uh, you can come to open Swatch Library, which we looked at. Um, I covered detectors ago and you can see there you've got your color box, and we're gonna go to solid coated, and you can see here you've got ah, a lot of those colors. Um, to choose from now, you would normally need a Pantone solid coated, um, physical color book to pick the links that you really want. Andi, it would be best to do that, um you have to just shell out the money and buy one. Um, but there are a few other ways off converting your currency and y que colors to Pantone. And what you can do from there is just double check them. You probably would would never go off to print without checking them. But this is a nice way of quickly finding a match without having to leave through the color books. So, uh, with the green swatch selected, I'm gonna go upto windows and I'm gonna get my collar guide down. And from here, I can go to edit or apply color. So at the moment, I'm gonna sit. That green is my base color, and I can go here and I can click one color job and I can choose to go from which library. So I'm gonna choose my Pantone solid coated, and I'm gonna say OK, and you'll see there was a slight shift in color and I'm just gonna say OK, so all of a sudden this color guide is now giving me all of those variations of hue in a Pantone color. Um and you can see down here Pantone plus solid coded. So I've now kind of swapped this from none to the color books off solid coated. So that's pretty cool. And you can see down Here it comes up Pantone five Stephen foresee. Ah, and coated means it's gonna go on coated stock uncoated or you means uncoated stock. Eso um so that's the difference there. So, nix, I'm gonna go to my cream. And as I've said before, creams air kind of notoriously hard to get right. So if I just simply click on this is my base color, I'm going to see what it provides me with. Yeah, see, I'm not loving that pink so already I'm like alarm bells. I really need to check out proper color books and make sure intricate picking my colors correctly. Um, but normally you would find the creams within the pistol Pantone books. So I'm going to go to color books and I'm going to go down to pest ALS and Neons pistols and Neons coated, and you can see it's finding a much better match there. I'm pretty happy with that. Obviously happy with it on screen, I now need to go and check it with my actual color box. But what it does is it just gives you, um, right away, the kind of quick colors to go to double check on. And the more, um, the more you become familiar with working with Pantone colors, the quicker you'll be able to find and you'll get your favorites. But it's always good. Teoh cheek Those if it's going to print because you really wanted to be a really good Mitch to the wrist of the brand s, it's so the mural sitting on the counter you want the business cards, which may be one spot color to match the seem like a vinyl print off the counter. So, um, it's a really good idea. Teoh match those all up with the right resource is so the proper color books in color chips , um, along with the seem like high values that brings us to the end of the course. I hope you enjoyed learning about the basics of color theory. There's always more to learn, but hopefully this gives you the confidence you need to choose and work with color and your future projects. Don't forget to drop me a line with any updates you would like to see. And I can get those into the course till next time. Be bold, be brave and say it with color.