- The color wheel is useful to designers and illustrators
in at least a couple of really important ways.
For one thing, it reminds us there are three
primary colors, and that when primary colors are mixed,
you get secondary colors.
When primary and secondary colors are mixed,
you get tertiaries.
Another way that the color wheel helps
designers and illustrators is by helping us
brainstorm for ways of coming up with
good-looking color schemes.
How so?
Well they serve as schematics that conveniently
highlight different ways of combining colors.
Let me show you what I mean.
Here are my five favorite
color wheel-based palettes starting
with monochromatic color schemes.
Here's a color wheel, and here's one slice of it.
The blue green slice.
All you need is one slice of a color wheel
to come up with a monochromatic color scheme,
which are combinations of lighter, darker,
brighter, and/or more muted versions of a single hue.
Here are three different monochromatic
schemes applied to an illustration.
Next, analogous color schemes.
The word analogous means sequential,
and this kind of palette is made from a sequence
of between two and five neighboring hues.
And keep in mind when looking at all the
color schemes in this video that every spoke
of every color wheel that's being used
is being used as a placeholder for all the
dark, light, bright, and muted versions of its color.
Triadic palettes use colors that are equally
spaced around the color wheel.
These color schemes have a strong potential
for expressing feelings of energy
and diversity, since they feature colors
that come from far apart locations on the wheel.
Complementary colors sit opposite
each other on the wheel, and if you're looking
for a palette made from just two slices
of the color wheel, and you want that palette
to be able to express itself with as much
visual diversity as possible, then a complementary pair
might be just what you're looking for.
Now, I have to admit, this next one,
this one's a favorite of mine.
It's the split complementary palette.
A split complementary palette is where you choose
one color and then you pair it with the two colors
on either side of its complement.
I'm going to show you what I mean.
I'll start with a fairly bright orange,
and I'll look across the color wheel
for the orange's complement, blue.
Then I'll select the two colors
on either side of that complement.
Blue green and blue violet.
See how nicely a bright orange stands out
against the muted shades of its split complements, and also
notice how I've not only broken down
the cool hues into multiple shades
for this design, I've also used
more than one version of the orange.
There's a lot going on here.
Why do I like split complementary palettes so much?
It's because I like the visual sophistication
that you get when you're working with two colors
that are closely related, you know.
They visually agree with each other,
and you combine them with a color
with a completely opposing look from
clear across the color wheel.
This gives you conveyances of
both agreement and dessent within
a single color scheme, and that's what I see
as this really intriguing and sophisticated dynamic.
If you'd like a handy reminder of all the
color wheel palettes that we just talked about,
download the printable PDF
that goes with this video, and let this thing
help you create your own functional
and really good-looking color schemes.