Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
COLOR IN TYPOGRAPHY
is highly effective in enhancing spatial relationships, as well as creating
relationships between text and image. In this brochure spread, the warm golden type helps push
the type closer to the spatial position of the mantis, but contrasts with the cool violet tones of the
beetle, helping it to optically advance in space.
Carolyn Calles
The Art Institute, Orange County, United States
Hue
This term refers to the identity of a color—red, violet, orange, and so on. This iden-
tity is the result of how we perceive light being reflected from objects at particular fre-
quencies. When we see a green car, what we're seeing isn't a car that is actually green;
we're seeing light waves reflected off the car at a very specific frequency while all other
frequencies are absorbed. Of color's four intrinsic attributes, the perception of hue is
the most absolute: we see a color as red or blue, for example. But all color perception
is relative, meaning that a color's identity is really knowable only when there's another
color adjacent with which it can be compared. Some hues we are able to perceive are
absolutes of a sort, what we call the primary colors. These colors—red, blue, and yel-
low—are as different from each other in terms of their frequency as can be perceived
by the human eye. Even a slight change in frequency in any one of the primary colors
will cause the eye to perceive that it has shifted slightly toward one of the other primary
colors. When we are presented with a light frequency between those of two primary
colors, we perceive a hue that evenly mixes them. These hues are the secondary colors:
between red and yellow is the frequency perceived as orange; between yellow and blue,
green; and between blue and red, violet. Further intermixing produces the tertiary hues:
red orange, orange-yellow, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and violet-red.
