Colour Theory

Colour can communicate emotions in a very primal way, however, due to different cultures, the symbolism of colours varies. There are constants that can be found in colour practice that help enhance the emotional messages of your designs.

A colour wheel has a primary function where the primary colours which are red, yellow and blue, sit opposite their complementary colours which are green, purple and orange. The colour wheel also has a function of displaying temperature, where it is split into half. The warm colours are between yellow to pink, whereas the cold colours are between green and purple. There are two dominate colours, the warm orange and the cold blue. Another function is a value scale, from lightest colour which is yellow to darked colour which is purple and any midrange value in between.

In theory, every colour in the spectrum can be mixed using just the three primary colours. Secondary colours are formed when mixing two primary colours together. For example, yellow and red create orange.

Complementary colours have a visual relationship where by placing each colour next to each other, the intensity of each colour increases. This allows you to attract the viewer's eye to important items, this is due the colours creating eye-catching contrast that can be likened to black against white.

Journey uses lots of warm colours that are close together on the colour wheel during the desert sections, this gives an emotional effect of harmony. However, in another part of the game, tension and unease is created by contrasting the orange and reds of the character with the complementary colours of green and blue from the envirnoment.

The colour of light must also be considered as well as the colour of objects. Light has different colour depending on the wavelength. The sun radiates warm colours such as red, orange and yellow, this makes objects seem warmer. However, if a cloud passes in from of the sun the blue light of the sky becomes a dominant light source, this causes objects to become cooler. So the dominant colour source dictates the temperature of colours within a scene. This is colour harmony, where an overall temperature unifies all the colours in an image.

Positioning colours also affects the temperatures as reds can seem cold next to blues and blues can seem warm against reds. So the combination of colours use depends on the overall light temperature in you scene.