Colour is very important to me and strongly affects the way I feel. It was the long, grey UK days that made me flee to New Zealand, a land filled with sunlight and vivid colours. I love the tropical blues, deep lush greens and bleached out beachside towns, like living 1970s movies shot on old 8mm film. The shimmering east coast with creamy white dunes, and the dark, dramatic west coast with inky black volcanic sand. I went through a few major colour phases throughout my early twenties. From the black years, to the blue years, an obsession with all things fluoro, then back to black with bright flashes. My current obsession is with bright vampy reds, and the deep rich purple I mix for my hair. Colour is very important to me and strongly affects the way I feel. It was the long, grey UK days that made me flee to New Zealand, a land filled with sunlight and vivid colours. I love the tropical blues, deep lush greens and bleached out beachside towns, like living 1970s movies shot on old 8mm film. The shimmering east coast with creamy white dunes, and the dark, dramatic west coast with inky black volcanic sand. I went through a few major colour phases throughout my early twenties. From the black years, to the blue years, an obsession with all things fluoro, then back to black with bright flashes. My current obsession is with bright vampy reds, and the deep rich purple I mix for my hair.Perceptions of colour have varied throughout history, and the Virtual Colour Museum is an excellent place to explore colour order systems from Art & Science. The Philosopher Goethe believed that colours were 'Deeds of Light' and classified colour into three categories, of 'powerful', 'gentle' and radient. Fast forward to the Digital Age and we are dealing with pixels to mix colours, not paint. Wikipedia explains that Colour is 'the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, yellow, blue and others. Colour derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light energy versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors.'

The online colour system called the hexadecimal system works in a similar way, with a series of six digits or letters denoting the proportion of Red, Blue and Green in each shade.
Starting with 00000 for black (for the absence of colour) and finishing with FFFFF for white (all colours on full). Red is FF0000 (with red on full, but no green or blue), and following this logic you can see that Green would be 00FF00 and Blue 0000FF. I was amused to find out recently that my hair colour is 660099 and known as Generic/Vulgar purple which is ironic, considering purple was once the colour associated with Empire & Royalty.

A big part of digital design is finding pleasing colourways, and 20+ Tools for working with colour will help the tonally challenged tell between 'web-safe', 'web-smart', and 'unsafe' colour schemes. Input a base colour into the Color Wizard and you will be given a set of hue, saturation and tint/shade variations, as well as suggested color schemes. The Color Palette Generator works from any online image to give a set of matching shades. Colr offers the same service but is more sophisticated, offering colours from different parts of a picture. You can also work through 10 tools to help you select a web pallette starting with COLOURlovers where you can delve into a world of colours, palletes & patterns or upload your own. If that's not enough, Follow the Rainbow has 101 Colour resources for web designers to help you out with Colour Forums, Management, Tips, Theory, Tools, Colourblindness, Downloads, Inspiration, Photoshop & Gimp, Schemes & Websites.

So what colours are likely to stay fresh and which dated? Will this year's Hot Hue be tomorrow's Puce? If you want to head down to your local fabric store or op shop to be bang on trend, then you can check out the Pantone colour forecast for Fall 2008. Which incidentally contains a Royal Lilac shade similar to my very own Vulgar Purple. Looking forward to next year and 2009 colours predictions from Colour Forward say we should be looking at 'bright, layered colors, contrasted with earthy, neutral tones'. The cynic in me says this covers pretty much anything. You should be aware of global trends if you are a designer, but try not to be driven by them. After all it's up to you whether you set trends or follow them. Be brave, original and above all - Be Colourful.

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As well as being TBI's strategist & columnist, Helen Baxter is Producer & Presenter of the g33k show, Fridays, 8 p.m. on Alt TV. She is also Managing Directrix of L33t Media, which produces 3D iTV, Animation & Machinima.

10/07/08