Gene Lu

Colors Made to Stick
Tuesday, 13 May 2008

The "SUCCESs" of Phil Warish's Color Class

An addition to the designer toolkit
An addition to the designer toolkit
Simple
Prior to class, all students were required to purchase a box of Color Aid (314 Colors). What is Color Aid? It's basically (in this case) 314 sheets of paper silkscreened with 314 different colors. It's a very effective tool in developing color palettes because there is a limit in the number of colors used. Imagine the tremendous amount of time in having to come up with a color palette with millions of colors at your disposal or how about finding the perfect combination of fonts with thousands of fonts loaded onto your computer?

Unexpected
"I wish I sparked up before coming to class" was a reaction from one of the student's during a project in class. The effects of one color on another, in theory, were somewhat interesting, but creating these 'magical' combinations and witnessing them firsthand was definitely unexpected.

Concrete
The color effects of one color on another might have seemed abstract, but the theory behind it was concrete. According to Phil, dealing with colors is the same as dealing with numbers in mathematics. With the 3 axis (hue, saturation, and brightness) in mind, one could manipulate colors accordingly to a mathematical T. To reinforce the theory and application of color, the course also suggested picking up Josef Albers' "Interaction of Color", which I'm currently reading as a course refresher.

Credible
The color class was credible because it was taught by someone that was credible. Here are Phil's credentials according to SVA's Course Finder.

Besides his extensive list of past clients and experiences, examples of everyday good and poor color use were brought into class and analyzed by Phil, which also built up his and the subject matter's credibility. 

Emotional
The class made me realize how important color was when dealing with design. In the past, I've glazed over projects with shades of greys and an accent color, but now my eyes have opened to a bigger potential in the overall design with the addition of color. This comes handy especially in a time (now) where most web designs are approaching a minimalistic threshold.

This self-actualization runs tangent to the pinnacle of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as mentioned in the latter half of the book, Made to Stick. Maslow's self-actualization reads (according to Wikipedia): "...the instinctual need of humans to make the most of their abilities and to strive to be the best they can. Working toward fulfilling our potential, toward becoming all that we are capable of becoming." This is exactly what contributes to the stickiness of the class.

Stories
What tied this class together were the numerous color-related stories Phil recounted to us as we thumbled through our Color Aid and sliced and diced squares for our color palettes. It provided a sense of meaningfulness to our 6:30pm to 9:30pm, every Tuesday night classes.

For the people in the New York City area looking for a continuing education course, I definitely recommend this class. A few classmates and I agree that Phil's color class was one of the most important, thought-provoking, eye-opening class we've taken so far at SVA.

Last, but not least, below is one of the last projects from class: Squint your eyes and stare at where the green meets the orange in the middle. In your peripheral vision, notice the light green and yellow stripes start to resemble one another. The actual colors that you see are displayed in the two small squares all the way to the right. Behold, Color Effects and Scale!

Project done in class
Color effects and Scale

For more information on classes taught by Phil Warish, check out SVA's Continuing Education Course Finder.

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.
 
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