About

COURSE INFO

Instructor: Lara McCormick  //  laramc(at)gmail.com  //  laramc.com

Summer 2015 // Saturday June 6 & June 13, 9-5,
San Francisco Campus // Rm 510

From the Catalog: Learn how to work with color for visual communication in a variety of contexts. Explore color theory principles, applied color theory, the psychology of color, digital color management and more. Specifically, you review the history of color usage, from print to digital, and work with the color wheel. You learn to manipulate value, saturation and color temperature. Understand what it means to see through color along a range from opacity to transparency. Learn to create effective color contrasts and develop pleasing color palettes. Gain the skills to confidently work with color in the digital environment as you manage color across applications and learn to calibrate color with software and hardware tools.

Syllabus Digital Color Theory (PDF)

 

COURSE OVERVIEW (subject to change)

DAY 1

Introductions, Review syllabus.
Set up Pinterest boards

Module 1: History of Color Theory

Module 2: The Color Wheel & Terminology

Demo on working with the color wheel

Online tools for working with color (video/demo)

Module 3: Itten’s 7 Contrasts
Application exercise

Module 4: Albers Interaction of Color
Seeing through color: opaque, translucent, and transparency
Application exercise

Module 5: Palettes in the Environment
Application exercise

Module 6: Color & Emotion, Color & Culture
Homework Assigned

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DAY 2

Critique: Homework

Module 7: Branding and Color
Project: Using one of the online resources discussed, create three 4-color palettes to be used as follows:
1) Restaurant identity and interior design for a restaurant / 2) Restaurant identity and interior design for the same restaurant, but located in Japan / 3) Therapists identity system (print collateral and website) / 4) Branding for an energy drink aimed at teens

Module 9: Restrictive palettes
Demo: Strategies for using a limited number of colors
Project: Using the assets in the file provided, create four versions of an advertisement:
Greyscale (print), 1 color job (print), 2 color job (print), any number of colors (web).

Module 10: Managing color across applications
Lecture & Demo: color calibration

Module 11: Guest lecture & critique

Final: Color Portfolio
Submit a PDF of all exercises from the class, and the two homework projects. Please include any process work, notes, sketches. DUE: Saturday June 20th, 2015.