Color Theory + Design

“A thing is never seen as it really is.” — Josef Albers

Color Theory

Josef Albers is noted to have revolutionized the art of seeing. He practiced a poetic way of perceiving; to him, there was more to an object which the eye often misses. Layers hide under the shell of all the things that are sprawled throughout our environments. Personalities, stories, tales of beauty, victory, death, war, and defeat are found in normal, every day objects that are commonly unnoticed.

Josef was known to be an experiential teacher when instructing his students. I imagine a Robin Williams behavior and character from him — something like that of the English teacher in Dead Poet’s Society. One of Josef’s referenced instructions was asking students to go outside, find an object, and make it look like something else. Pieces of trash, a cigarette bud, a stop sign — “Oh, the stories they tell!” I picture him saying, in an exuberant, easily mistaken for manic, kind of way. The more impossible the transformation of the material, the more successful it was. He prized inexpensive ways of creating beautiful things, of communicating stories, and transforming unnoticed parts of a person’s day into something to remember, interact with, and question. This, he believed, is what it is to truly see something.

Of all the senses, we rely mostly on sight. We use it almost all the time in our waking moments. Even in our dreams we are using a construct of vision to project our thoughts onto our eyelid screens. And because we use it so frequently, we often don’t appreciate how marvelous a thing it is to see. In this ungratefulness we lose the magic that seeing holds — the power that it possesses and its true definition. For designers, understanding and knowing the power of seeing is integral to creating successful designs.

Let’s play with some colors to illustrate.

This is a common trick. If you don’t know it than play along. If you do know it and still like to have fun, than you can play too. Below you see a yellow square with rows of white circles. Stare at the black circle in the middle for half a minute. After 30 seconds, immediately move your gaze to right of the square so your eyes are fixated on clean, white space.

If you did it right, you’ll notice the remnants of the shape from the yellow square and white circles. You’ll also notice that it’s blue. This illustrates how simple it is to create something that doesn’t exist, all by using common shapes and colors.

The next one is even easier. Look below at the color blocks and notice the smaller, orange squares in the middle.

The two orange squares in the middle look like different colors. They’re the same color, as you may have guessed. Now you can see how easy it is to create an illusion of difference in something that is the same all by using more simple colors and shapes.

Design

As you can see, even with simple pieces of geometry and colors one can create illusions. In these illusions, we communicate a story, something for the viewer to believe. With the first example, the viewer will see the remnants of the yellow square and white circles in a shade of blue. The second example illustrates how an ordering of colors can make the same color look completely different.

To me, these illustrate the foundation of any design — the illusion which it creates for the viewer, reader or participant. A design does not tell you its story directly, the story is found in its subtle layers. In these layers are the illusion that it produces, changing slightly to every eye. For any good design to be realized, it must successfully produce it’s illusion — the thing that is slightly unseen yet easily heard.

Josef Albers taught a way of seeing that revealed the true nature and contents of the things that lie in sight. In order to create successful designs, one needs to practice and implement this poetic way of seeing. Without understanding the layers that every object carries, a designer will never be able to create the illusions that make a design story successful. Design is illusionary. It’s subtle, coy, and powerful. It is to take the layers of objects, of stories, and messages, ordering them in a certain way and iterating certain things. And when done right, it creates the illusion of a story, a believable one.