Combining the right colors is a proven way to make your designs come alive and express the exact feeling while creating. Whether you are designing a dynamic poster featuring several colors or a romantic postcard, it takes a trained eye to combine several distinct tones and relay the message it intends to pass. Although bringing together colors does not come naturally, like other skills, you can learn it. Here are some tips you can adopt to combine colors like a pro and enhance your graphic design service.
1.Get acquainted with color theory
First, it will be an excellent idea to refresh your knowledge of the primary color wheel. You may have come across this at school, but it wouldn’t hurt to retake a look. Yellow, Blue, and, Red are primary colors. You cannot make them by mixing other colors. Orange, green, and violet are secondary colors from a mixture of two primary colors. When you combine a primary color with a secondary, the result is a tertiary color. Gray, black, and white are neutral hues.
Note that all colors have tints; a mixture of the original color with white, shades; a color that blends with black, and tones; a mix of the actual color with both white and black. For instance, azure is a tint of blue. If you add black to the original blue, you get sapphire- a shade. You can read up on more information about this concept.
2. Utilize ready-made platelets and color wheels.
Imagine that you have selected the best font and you want to fit it into your graphics, but the background image and text color just don’t blend. To avoid this situation, select a new hue that will appear natural when mixed with others. A simple technique to choose complementary colors is to use a color wheel to seek through some ready-made platelets. Complementary colors are located at opposite sides of a color wheel. You can achieve even more beautiful results if you blend color from the center of the wheel with that from the outside edge. There are several tools and online experiences that can explain more about this.
3.Try out contrasting colors
When blending two or more colors, it is vital to have excellent contrast. Even with a great background, if you do not select a proper additional color that the background does not overpower, your design will not be legible. One practical solution is to choose a darker tone of the background color and achieve an enhanced contrast. The primary difficulty you might encounter is that most backgrounds are not uniform, and the new color you select might not work for the entire area. So, it is more advisable to match colors or select an overall color and ensure that it works on the whole design.
4.Pay attention to what those colors mean
To properly learn to combine colors, pay attention to the significance of the hues you intend to use. The perception of color is subjective; similar colors can birth different reactions. That implies that something considered uplifting for one person might be depressing for another. However, all colors are separated into two primary categories; cool and warm. Read up on the colors that fall under each category and adapt them to suit the mood of your design.