The Basics of Color Theory for Beginners | Canva Live

Summary

In this Canva tutorial, Katy offers four essential tips to master color in design. She introduces color theory as a blend of art and science, guiding viewers to find harmonious color combinations using Canva's color wheel tool. The importance of contrast, especially for readability, is highlighted through the explanation of hue, saturation, and value. Neutral colors are emphasized as supporting characters that enhance the main colors. Lastly, the 60-30-10 Rule is presented as a practical guide to balance color proportions in design. The video encourages viewers to explore their creativity while maintaining a balanced color palette.

Takeaways

• 🎨 Color theory is essential for understanding how to pair colors harmoniously. It's a mix of art and science that helps determine which colors work well together.
• 🌈 The color wheel, invented by Isaac Newton, is a fundamental tool for exploring color harmony and includes terms like complementary, monochromatic, analogous, triadic, tetradic, and split complementary.
• 🛠️ Canva's color wheel tool can assist in finding color combinations. It allows users to select a color and explore pairing options based on color theory.
• 🔍 Contrast is vital for readability, especially with text. Hue, saturation, and value are key components in creating effective contrast and ensuring colors don't compete for attention.
• 📚 Hue represents the color family, saturation its intensity, and value its lightness or darkness. Understanding these aspects in the color picker helps in adjusting colors for better contrast.
• 🌀 Magenta is a color created by our brain's interpretation of red and violet wavelengths, highlighting the fascinating interplay between perception and color science.
• 🏳️‍🌈 Neutral colors, such as blacks, whites, grays, and browns, play a supporting role in design, allowing primary colors to stand out while adding depth and balance.
• 📐 The 60-30-10 Rule is a design guideline that suggests a ratio for applying colors in a project, with 60% as the primary color, 30% as secondary, and 10% for accents.
• 🎨 This rule can be adapted for different color schemes, including tetradic combinations, by maintaining the ratio to ensure visual harmony and balance.
• 🛑 Encouragement is given to designers to create their own color application rules, emphasizing the importance of finding the right balance and ratios for individual projects.
• 📚 Additional resources are available for learning more about color theory, including videos and workbooks, to further develop one's skills in color application and design.

Q & A

Why might working with color be intimidating for some people?

Working with color can be intimidating because of the vast number of colors to choose from and the potential for frustration when not knowing how to effectively combine them.

What is the purpose of the color wheel?

The color wheel is a tool used to determine which colors look good together, creating color harmony, and was invented by Isaac Newton.

What are some common terms in color harmony?

Common terms in color harmony include complimentary, monochromatic, analogous, triadic, tetradic, and split complementary, which describe the relationships between colors.

How can Canva's color wheel tool assist in choosing color combinations?

Canva's color wheel tool allows users to select a color and see suggested combinations based on color theory, making it easier to find harmonious color pairs.

What is the importance of contrast in color selection?

Proper contrast is crucial for readability, especially with text, as too much brightness or darkness can make it difficult for the audience to read and may cause frustration.

What are hue, saturation, and value, and how do they affect color contrast?

Hue is the color itself, saturation is the intensity, and value is the lightness or darkness. Understanding these aspects helps in creating effective color contrast.

Why are neutral colors important in design?

Neutral colors, like blacks, whites, grays, and browns, play a supporting role, receding into the background to make the main colors stand out more.

What is the 60-30-10 Rule in color application?

The 60-30-10 Rule is a design principle that suggests a ratio for applying colors in a project, with 60% being the primary color, 30% the secondary, and 10% the accent.

How can the 60-30-10 Rule be adapted for a tetradic color combination?

In a tetradic combination, the primary color still makes up 60%, the secondary 30% can be split between two colors, and the remaining 10% is for the accent colors.

What does the presenter suggest for those who want to deviate from the 60-30-10 Rule?

The presenter encourages designers to create their own color application formula, as long as they find the right balance and ratios for their color palette.

Where can viewers find more information on color theory and design?

Viewers can find more information on color theory through videos on the channel, a learn and play workbook, and the Canva Shorts playlist.

Outlines

00:00

🎨 Understanding Color Theory and Becoming a Color Guru

The first paragraph introduces the intimidation many feel when working with color due to the vast number of choices and the complexity of color theory. The speaker, Katy, offers four tips to help viewers master color in design. She emphasizes the importance of color theory, which combines art and science to create harmonious color combinations. The color wheel, invented by Isaac Newton, is highlighted as a tool for understanding color relationships like complementary, monochromatic, analogous, triadic, tetradic, and split complementary. Canva's color wheel tool is recommended for experimenting with color combinations. The paragraph also touches on the concept of contrast, which is crucial for readability, especially with text, and introduces the color picker's role in adjusting hue, saturation, and value.

05:02

📐 Applying the 60-30-10 Rule for Color Palette Balance

The second paragraph delves into the practical application of the 60-30-10 Rule in design, which is a guideline for distributing color proportions in a harmonious way. The primary color should make up 60% of the design, the secondary color 30%, and the accent color 10%. The paragraph explains how to apply this rule even with more complex color schemes like a tetradic palette, ensuring that the primary color remains dominant. The speaker illustrates the impact of different color palettes on poster design, showing how the same rule can create distinct vibes. The paragraph concludes by encouraging designers to explore their own color formulas while maintaining balance, and it invites viewers to further explore color theory through additional resources and subscribe to the channel for more design content.

Keywords

💡Color Theory

Color theory is the foundation for understanding how colors work together and is essential for creating aesthetically pleasing combinations. It's a blend of art and science that helps in determining which colors are harmonious. In the context of the video, color theory is introduced as the starting point for anyone looking to understand color better, with the color wheel being a key tool for exploring different color relationships like complementary, monochromatic, and analogous.

💡Color Wheel

The color wheel is a visual representation of colors arranged according to their relationships, typically in a circular pattern. Invented by Isaac Newton, it's a fundamental tool in color theory and is used to identify harmonious color schemes. The video script mentions the color wheel as a resource in Canva for finding color combinations and emphasizes its importance in understanding color relationships.

💡Color Harmony

Color harmony refers to the pleasing and aesthetically balanced arrangement of colors. It's a concept that emerges from color theory and is achieved by selecting colors that work well together, creating a sense of visual harmony. The video emphasizes the importance of color harmony in design, suggesting that understanding it can alleviate the intimidation of working with color.

💡Contrast

Contrast in color refers to the difference in lightness or darkness between colors, which is crucial for readability, especially in text. The video discusses the importance of contrast, explaining how colors that are too bright or too dark can make text difficult to read and how adjusting hue, saturation, and value can create the necessary contrast.

💡Hue

Hue is a term used to describe the pure color without any white, black, or gray added. It's what we commonly refer to as the name of a color, like red, blue, or green. In the script, hue is discussed in the context of the color picker, where it's represented by a bar of rainbow colors, allowing for the selection of different colors on the color wheel.

💡Saturation

Saturation refers to the intensity or purity of a color. A highly saturated color is vibrant and strong, while a less saturated color appears more muted or pale. The video explains that saturation can be adjusted in the color picker, with the script noting that moving the picker to the right increases the intensity of the color.

💡Value

Value is the attribute of a color that represents its lightness or darkness. It's adjusted by adding white (lightness) or black (darkness) to a hue. The video script describes how moving the color picker up and down changes the value, making colors lighter or darker, which is important for creating contrast.

💡Neutral Colors

Neutral colors are colors that are not overly bright or vibrant and typically include whites, blacks, grays, and browns. They are described in the video as supporting characters in a design, receding into the background to allow the main colors to stand out. The video emphasizes the importance of neutrals in creating balance and depth in a design.

💡60-30-10 Rule

The 60-30-10 Rule is a design principle used to establish a color balance in a composition. It suggests that the primary color should make up 60% of the design, the secondary color 30%, and the accent color 10%. The video explains how this rule can be applied to any color palette to ensure a harmonious and visually appealing design.

💡Accent Color

An accent color is a small percentage of a color used to add visual interest or highlight certain elements in a design. In the context of the 60-30-10 Rule mentioned in the video, the accent color makes up the 10% and can be a brighter or more vibrant color that draws the eye and adds a pop of interest to the design.

💡Design Rebel

In the video, a 'design rebel' is someone who chooses to break the traditional rules and create their own design formulas. The term is used to encourage viewers to feel empowered to experiment with color and find their unique style, whether that means adhering to the 60-30-10 Rule or creating their own ratios.

Highlights

Working with color can be intimidating due to the vast number of choices and the potential for frustration without knowledge.

The video provides four tips to become a color guru, simplifying the process of using color effectively.

Color theory is a blend of art and science that helps in determining harmonious color combinations.

Isaac Newton is credited with the invention of the color wheel, which is foundational to understanding color relationships.

Canva offers a tool that utilizes the color wheel to suggest color combinations based on user-selected hues.

Contrast is crucial in color pairing, especially for readability when text is involved.

Understanding hues, saturation, and value is key to achieving the right color contrast in designs.

Neutral colors, like blacks, whites, grays, and browns, play a supporting role in design by complementing and enhancing primary colors.

The 60-30-10 Rule is a design principle that helps in determining the proportion of colors in a palette for balanced designs.

The primary color should dominate at 60%, with secondary and accent colors making up the remaining 30% and 10% respectively.

Even with more than three colors, the 60-30-10 Rule can be adapted to maintain a harmonious color scheme.

Design rebels are encouraged to create their own color application rules, as long as they find the right balance.

The video demonstrates how different color palettes and the 60-30-10 Rule can drastically change the vibe of a poster design.

Magenta is a color that does not have a specific wavelength of light; it is a perceptual color created by the brain from red and violet wavelengths.

Canva's color picker tool allows for the adjustment of hue, saturation, and value to fine-tune color choices.

The video suggests that viewers subscribe to the channel for more content on design and color theory.

A learn and play workbook is available for those who wish to practice design with color, accessible from both desktop and mobile.

Transcripts

- Why is working with color so intimidating?

There are just so many colors to choose from.

And if you don't know what you're doing,

it can be downright frustrating.

If you're struggling with the color wheel,

well, my friends, today is your lucky day.

What's up everybody?

I'm Katy,

and today, we're back with another Canva short video.

Today, we're gonna give you four tips on how

to become the color guru you were always meant to be.

So let's get started.

Tip number one, color theory.

You could be asking yourself

how do I even get started with color?

And that's a good question.

The answer, color theory.

Color theory is a little bit art

and a little bit science

used to determine which colors look good together,

therefore creating color harmony.

In case you didn't know,

the color wheel was invented by Isaac Newton.

Yep. The guy that discovered the laws of gravity and motion.

You're also probably familiar with some color harmony terms,

like complimentary, monochromatic and analogous.

There's also triadic, tetradic and split complementary.

These basically just describe the relationship

between colors and Canva has a great tool for this.

Just go to the Canva color page

and click on the color wheel,

where you'll see different color combinations.

Say you like this blue,

but you're not sure what to pair it with.

Color theory will do it for you.

You can play around with different combinations

and see what you like and then adjust.

So if you're not sure where to start

with color combinations, remember color theory.

All you need to do is choose one color

and then let science do the rest.

Tip two, contrast.

Science makes pairing colors easy

but proper contrast is also important,

especially when text is involved.

Colors have tints and shades of light and dark.

When your colors are all too bright or all too dark,

it becomes difficult to read.

They're fighting for dominance,

which can really frustrate your audience.

This is where hue, saturation and value come into play.

In the color picker, you'll see a bar and a rectangle.

Rectangle?

Sure, let's go with that.

The bar with the rainbow colors is actually the hue.

Hue is basically how you would describe any color

in the color wheel like red, green, blue, and so on.

Fun fact, did you know that magenta doesn't actually exist?

The science behind it

is that there's no specific wavelength of light for magenta.

Our brain simply tries to make sense

of the red and violet wavelengths that it sees

and it averages out to create magenta.

Now back to the color picker.

The larger rectangle is where saturation and value are.

Value is the lightness or darkness of a color.

If we were to move the color picker from top to bottom,

we can adjust the value.

As you go to the bottom, you're adding more black,

making your hue darker,

while moving to the top you add more white,

making it lighter.

Saturation is the intensity of a color.

So if we place the color picker to the right,

its intensity is the strongest,

giving you a more vibrant red.

As you move to the left,

the intensity gets weaker, resulting in a paler red.

Understanding the role of these three

in the color picker will greatly help you

in creating color contrast.

Tip three, neutral colors.

Let's now talk about neutral colors.

Neutral colors are usually overlooked

but they play a huge role in your designs.

Think of it this way.

Colors are like a cast in a movie.

Your lead actors are your main colors,

while neutral colors are your supporting characters.

They tend to recede in the background,

making your lead actors stand out more.

But without them you're left with a very boring story.

Neutral colors are your blacks, whites, grays, and browns.

And they can be dark, light, warm or cool.

Their most distinct trait

is that you don't really know what the underlying color is.

Is it blue?

Is it red?

Is it orange?

We don't really know.

And the great thing about neutral colors are,

they make way for your primary colors

to really shine through in your designs.

They're the perfect compliment

to your brighter, bolder colors.

Tip four, the 60-30-10 Rule.

Have you heard of the 60-30-10 Rule?

It's been used by interior designers for years,

but recently adapted to graphic design,

especially for web design.

This is really useful

when applying your chosen color palette

in a design project

and will actually help you determine

your "how much to how much" ratio.

When you first started creating your color palette,

you started with one color, like this blue.

Then have the help of the color wheel for the rest.

The first color should be 60%.

Your primary color.

This color will be used the most.

The 30% will be your secondary color.

It's used half as much as your primary color

but still visible enough to be seen.

I generally like to use a neutral color

as my secondary color

so my design can breathe a little bit.

Your remaining 10% will be for your accent.

This can be a brighter, more vibrant color.

But what if you have more than three colors,

like say a tetradic color combination?

You can still apply the 60-30-10 Rule.

Here, the blue is still the 60%.

The 30% is split equally with the white and the magenta

and the bright green and the yellow for the remaining 10%.

This rule is applicable to any color palette you choose.

Just remember to stick to the ratios

when you have more than three colors.

Now, let's see how these two color palettes

actually look on a poster.

By applying these two different color palettes

and applying the same ratios,

these two posters look very different from each other.

They have different vibes,

just because of the 30-60-10 Rule.

Now, you may be a bit of a design rebel

and you wanna make your own rule.

I say, go for it.

I encourage you to create your own formula,

like say 40, 40, 20

or maybe even 30, 30, 20, 20.

Whatever the formula might look like,

just make sure you find the right balance

and ratios for your color palette.

With these four tips,

working with color isn't as intimidating

as we first thought it would be.

And I'm sure in no time,

your inner color guru is going to come through.

If you'd like to learn more about color theory,

we have two great videos available on our channel.

Wanna learn how to design with color?

There's a great learn and play workbook

that you can use from your desktop or mobile.

Also check out our Canva Shorts playlist

for more videos just like this one.

And hey, why not subscribe to our channel

for more great content on design while you're at it?

You won't regret it.

(upbeat music)