Colour of Nature

Making a colour palette is one thing I really enjoy, I picked up a really good tip from Peter Saville which I've demonstrated above, and that is to take pictures of natural scenes, and use a dropper to take colours out of it, this way you can harness the natural harmony of Nature, and make a colour palette that always works together, after all nature never makes a scene that doesn't work does it? Everything natural looks... 'natural', and this is always pleasing to the eye.


I had this conversation with my brother, and he raised a good point. Do the colours look good together because Nature has a magic power to put colours together that work on a scientific level, that our brains interpret as harmonious, or do our brains interpret those colours as working together because we've seen them together in nature, and we've been conditioned to think this is natural harmony?


Of course traditional colour theory can place complimentary colours together, but this doesn't always hold together when nature gets involved, there are no rules to how natural blends occur, but we always accept them as harmonious. On the page, it can be very difficult to randomly bring a selection of colours together and make them work as a brand palette.

For me Nature Colour Theory is a bit of a cheat mode to making lush, interesting colour palettes, have a go, let me know how you get on.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614

Yellow is the new Punk Rock

Obvious really, I don't want to patronise you, but I'll make my case.

Things move in cycles, and for the last few years we've worked our way though the process colours in some kind of salute to the simplicity of the times, even though the 'times' have been really complicated and that doesn't make any sense, perhaps we've all subconsciously mourned the loss of simplicity whilst moaning that our iPhones can't scrape the ice off our windscreens.

Black

So back in late 90's we were all very Black, people loved saying "Black is the new Black," and it became sophisticated to make everything Black, it was shorthand for quality and it's absence of light was reflective of the era, as the Prophet Richard Madeley filled his bath tub with hand wipes bottled water and waited for the Millennium Bug to destroy our Black world.

This was Colour's Metal Period.

Cyan

Then we all woke up to a new dawn of realisation; we weren't going to die if our nan's Microwave reset it's clock. This gave us new hope and everything went Blue, Facebook now owned Blue, taking it from monolithic companies like Intel and HP. The Facebook blue went though several changes with millions of people threatening never to post on their wall again if they changed it one more time. They did change it, and everyone continued to post what they were having for tea, everyday.

This was Colour's ambitious Folk Period

Magenta

The markets were buoyant, pocket money averages were at an all time high, and people on benefits were enjoying Spa Days, these really were the glory days, nothing could stop us now. The Magenta reflected the opulence we all enjoyed, these really were Romanic times, grapes were everywhere and everyone was so happy, the only thing they had to worry about was what was going to go wrong, and they didn't have long to wait.

This was colours Prog Period.

Yellow

This brings us crashing into the current day. Times are hard again, people are depressed the world is looking for a new hope, something to blow away the sickly memories of Magenta, but still to give them hope, the people have turned to Yellow to do this. 

Yellow is the new Punk Rock, it's given us all hope, it's saying if I can do this, a colour that doesn't really work against white, a colour that makes people think of dehydrated urine, and colour that means 'passive or scared,' then you, yes you can do anything. Use it.

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614