Here we see a triad colour combination of the secondary colours—purple, green and orange—in the Jugo Juice logo. This is a vibrant triad, and I think it’s a good colour scheme for a juice company—the secondary colours really call to mind healthy fruits and vegetables: plums, grapes, carrots, lettuce, spinach, eggplant, beets, etc . . .

Aside from berries, primary colours don’t really suggest natural foods in this manner. While you can find primary colour triad schemes all over the place, this one seemed pretty rare to me . . . until I spotted it used three times within one week! Also on this book about colour combinations, and on the umbrellas in this window display at Esprit.

A random selection of yearly encyclopedias from the same publisher: it looks like there were some cuts to the budget after 1967, as we move from an unusual mix of colours to a monochromatic colour scheme . . . 2-colour printing is a lot cheaper.

This American Eagle golf shirt is another example of warm and cool contrast—warm tones of red-violet punctuated by a stripe of cool light blue-green. The stripe is such a break from the other tones that your eye immediately goes to it and the cool hue has a sort of soothing effect. Also an example of contrast of proportion: the blue colour wouldn’t be nearly so interesting if it were used throughout the shirt.

Here’s my first attempt at converting a photograph into a swatch palette, using a photo of some friends. Boots and bag, hair and mittens, jacket and T-shirt, shoes and lichen—I didn’t realize at the time how many complementary combinations of different chromas of red and green were going on that day.

These DVD covers use simple complementary colour combinations in their design. What better than bright, saturated colours and vivid contrasts to stand out against the snowy Alaskan wilderness in which the show is set.

This book cover shows an example of warm and cool contrast. The warm red-violet hue of Dylan seems to be coming forward out of the cool violet and blue background. There are also some discords going on, with the lighter violet against the darker blue, and even the darker red-violet against the light violet. The result creates a jarring effect for this “Icons of Pop Music” series that echoes Andy Warhol’s iconic pop culture silkscreens.

More colours distilled from real life: ‘Eye Candy’ by Anne Devries.

This blog does exactly what we did in class this week… rendering photos down into a limited palette of swatches. Using photos from the fashion blog The Sartorialist is a great way to predict trends in colour.

Endangered Species Wrapping Paper, 2004 by Lauren E. Adams uses a split-complementary combination of red-orange, blue and green.

This book cover makes use of an analogous colour scheme—five colours in all, but nevertheless all taken from side by side on the colour wheel: yellow, yellow-green, green, blue-green, and blue.

The Apple Computer Dictionary defines analogous as “comparable in certain respects, typically in a way that makes clearer the nature of the things compared.” In this sense then, using an analogous colour scheme for a book of plays that all share a common trait—being one act long—has some significance.