Color theory History, psychology of color
I was interested to see Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s contribution to color theory since I know of his work as a playwright but had no idea that he also strongly disagreed with Newtons conclusions about light and color. His experimentation pushed color theory to another level past just the physical properties of light. This than opened new ways to represent and explain the emotional and physical response that humans have when interacting with color.
This concept was explored further by Johannes Itten at Bauhaus, he began to study color for the psychological effect its presence had on people.
His student Joseph Albers developed developed a new organization method to explain balance in color for color combinations by using mathematical proportions to create these new combinations. His book “Interaction of Color” became a staple for color theory as it is a deep investigation on what happens as colors interact with one another. Munsell’s color tree introduced a “tree” styled graph to see color in all three dimensions based on Hue, Value and Chroma (HV/C) this new form of organizing color became the norm for industrialized systems.
The six basic color relationship concepts are :
Complementary
Split complementary
Double complementary
Analogous
Triadic
Monochromatic