Color Transforms

Marco Boschini once said, “Without color, il disegno may be called a body without a soul.” This statement literally tells us how important color means to a design. Everything surrounded us are in colors; for example, red apple, yellow taxi, green grass, or blue bird. Sometimes we even try to make clear glass with colors.

Imagine what our world would be like without colors. The world would be plain and dull.

The picture below is of my favorite umbrella, which integrates several colors including violet, green, yellow, blue, and pinkish-red. According to Itten’s coloring wheel, the colors on the umbrella are consisted mainly of tertiary colors, but also of some primary and secondary colors. In fact, the umbrella’s design is a demonstration of interaction among colors, and it alternates the how the color is portrayed by applying the colors in different sizes and in thick or thin lines. In addition, the thesis in the book of Interaction of Color wrote by Albert saying that color is subjective because color can be view differently due to its size, hue, or shape. For example, in the case of my umbrella, different size of line can make a color seen as another color. The thicker pink line makes the green looks like light blue. However, if the thicker green line when place next to the yellow thin line, the green line will transform into a yellowish green. The umbrella strictly abides by the laws of the coloring wheel.

(Photo resource: Ying-Chu, Chan)

Also, Part of color theory includes the idea of color psychology, which is the thinking of how color is correlated with out emotions. Colors can inspire sentiment in humans’ minds through consciousness. To illustrate, color can reflect our moods such as happy, sad, angry, or love. For instance, color red often related to passion, or love, whereas black often associate with sadness, or death. To illustrate, when comparing the umbrella’s tertiary colors to its primary colors, the tertiary colors portrays a lighter and livelier mood. With a mix among primary, secondary and tertiary colors, the umbrella would be able to communicate the alternating mood of its user.