Ittens Elements of colour

As id looked at various brands and seen their style I wanted to research more into colour as a possibility in my designs. I decided to look more into the theory of colour and how various colours can impact a design. I decided to look into Johannes Ittens and look at his book ‘The elements of colour.’ 

The book talks a lot about various theories within colour but the most prominent and one I felt most important to my designs were the contrast of extension colour theories. 

Contrast of Extension Examples

Itten’s book talks about contrast of extension as being the relative areas of two or more colours. Contrast of extension is balancing out two or more colours so all colours used are of even measure. This means for example a colour of dominance such as red, takes up a lot less surface area upon a page than a green it is placed on top of. This evens out hues making sure one is still not as dominant as the other. Itten’s talks about examples in his book of harmonious colours such as yellow/violet being a 1:4 – 3:4 split. If both hues were of 50/50 (2:4-2:4) proportion, the yellow hue would be the dominant colour next to the less dominant violet.

Contrast of Hue Examples

Contrast of hue is represented best through undiluted colours in their most intense luminosity. Common combinations showing contrast of hue are combinations such as yellow/red/blue, red/blue/green, blue/yellow/violet and so on. Contrast of hue is affectively the clear contrast between hue’s, not tints or shades of varying hue.

Contrast of Temperature Examples

Itten’s book talks about the expressive powers of cold-warm contrast and the effect it can have on people subconsciously. The book talks about the ability to verbalize the cold-warm property with other contrasting terms such as shadow and sun, light and heavy and wet and dry.