- Modules
- Colour Styling
- Standard Colour Wheel
Standard Colour Wheel
T-DES-003-005
This is possibly the colour wheel that is most commonly known. At a very young age, we are taught that this wheel starts with primary colours: yellow, blue and red. When mixing primaries, you get secondary colours. Yellow and red will give you orange, yellow and blue will give you green and finally, blue and red will give you purple. The following illustration shows the standard colour wheel on the left, and its primary and secondary colours.
But in the digital age, there is a downside to using this wheel, simply because it is based on the mixing of paint and also on how our eyes sees colour. If you analyze it carefully, notice how there are more warm colours than there are cool colours. Somehow the range of oranges and red is deeper than the blue colours.
Working with colours on a computer screen or printing your work is based on principles that are a bit different, since paint is not mixed for it and you would require a wheel that is a bit more evened out.
Time Estimated 5 mins
Difficulty Level Beginner
Topics List
- Introduction to Colour Styling
- Design Organization
- Basic Colour Theory
- Colour Anatomy
- Standard Colour Wheel
- Yurmby Colour Wheel
- Colour Schemes
- Monochromatic Colour Scheme
- Complementary Colour Scheme
- Analogous Colour Scheme
- Triadic Colour Scheme
- Split Complementary Colour Scheme
- Tetradic Colour Scheme
- Warm and Cool Colour Scheme
- How Our Brain Understands Colours
- Building a Simple Palette
- Preparing Your Research
- Adding to a Colour Scheme
- Thumbnailing
- Gamut Mapping
- Activity 1: Creating a Colour Palette
- Activity 2: Creating a Five-Colour Palette
- Activity 3: Painting a Colour Model