Random Colour Combinations
Sat, 15 Aug 2009
The briefings and strategic information supplied at the start of a design project define the aim for the “look and feel” to be developed. Thus it’s initially defined what the viewer should sense while being exposed to the product, but not how these sensations will be generated. It’s defined how the appearance shall be “aesthetically read”, but not how it is “written”.
I found the best way for me to start developing a fitting design is by finding combinations of colours generating a target mood. Not being a pure synaesthetic by nature I am using language as a means to describe the recepted-aesthetic-to-be in terms like dry, cold, traditional, technical, etc. Next, I am “going back” in the perceptional process, looking for colours and colour combinations which trigger these sensations.
A similar approach can be used to find shapes, but I found the the emotional impact of colour being much stronger and thus working better for this purpose.
Still, colour itself has its limitations, since the number of colours is finite, whereas the number of shapes is infinite. Hence the search for combinations of colours, whose number is finite as well – but larger by far. It’s a bit like using colours as letters or words while “writing” the design.
Some years ago I wrote a little Perl program to support this development process. It’s a tool to generate random combinations of colours, written to keep from getting stuck in the same combinations over and over again. It’s primitive on a technical level, but still useful:
Feel free to download, use and modify the source code:
colourcombiner
P.S.: There is a brillant book from Josef Albers: “Interaction of Colour”.