Pantone Book: The use of colour in Graphic Design

Colour is used within Graphic Design as a way to make a company, product or concept stand out from the crowd, whilst aligning with their brand values and visually enticing the user. A graphic designers main aim is to visually promote a particular message to a large audience, or visually present information. The effective use of colour can gain the attention of the target audience, or help to present the information by reflecting the emotions, ethos, values etc. Graphic Designers base their colour choices on the intended target audience because a colour scheme for a design aimed at children would be very different to that aimed at a formal company or adult brand.

The use of colour in Graphic Design also needs to be considered on a practical level as well as aesthetic. Graphic Designers use the 2 colour systems of ‘additive’ and ‘subtractive’. They need to decide which system is suitable for their particular design project. Anything that emits light uses additive and everything else uses subtractive colours. The context in which the designs will be used therefore need to be a main consideration and can impact the use of colour. 

The colour trends in Graphic design can be seen in a both negative and positive way. The colours that are in trend can influence designers to create aesthetic and popular work, but it is not visually unique to the other designs that are also following the colour trend.

It is important for Graphic Designers to take the colour trends into consideration because it means that their work will have a higher chance at being recognised and liked by the target audience, but it may not make them stand out. As a designer, we need to decide whether we want to follow the crowd and create safe work that we know it’ll be liked by a lot of people, or to ignore all of the trends and create something different and unique to what is already out there. The final outcome may be remembered for longer than if it had followed the trend, but equally it may be rejected and not appreciate. This is a risk that can be taken, but the designer needs to decide upon this.

An example of a colour trend in Graphic Design is IK Blue, a dark ultramarine blue colour, discovered by Yves Klein. According to the website ‘Trendlist’, it was most popular 2013, but also nearly as popularly used in 2014 and 2015. A Graphic Designer’s main consideration when designing a company’s brand identity is often the colour scheme. It is evident that during this time period, a lot of designers opted for the use of IK Blue. Visually it works very well and is on trend, but it does not make the companies stand out from one another as the majority of them use the colours of blue, white and black. This defeats the point of brand identity and how each brand should be identifiably different, showing that following design trends may not always lead to a positive outcome.  

OUGD404: Camille Walala

"... my real pleasure and goal in life is to transform dull and boring spaces and walls and to bring them to life with bold colour and patterns."

Camille Walala produces design with a heavily geometric outcome and brightly coloured. Predominantly famous for textile design, Camille is now doing a lot of work in creating 'show-stopping social spaces.

Her work is influenced by the Memphis Movement, the Ndebele tribe and Optical Art master Vasarely. Her main goal is to have her work putting a smile on people's faces and spread the feeling of energy with the viewers.

The 'itsnice.com' article on Camille Walala 'taking over London one façade at a time' with her murals. It all started when her boyfriend at the time was approached to paint a wall at the back of Whitby Street, but was shortly going to Australia, so Camille took the opportunity instead. Camille has now progressed on to painting an entire 5 storey building on  huge main road in East London.

The emphasis on colour and pattern is something I will take as inspiration from Camille Walala's work and apply it to the knowledge learnt from design principles. 

Pantone: Research

In 19963, Lawrence Herbert became the founder of Pantone. Herbert used his chemistry knowledge to systemise and simplify the company's stock of pigments and production of coloured inks. He purchased the company's technological assets and renamed them 'Pantone'. The guides consisted of a large number of small, thin cardboard sheets which had the colours printed on one side with the related colour swatches on the other. These cardboard sheets were then bound into a small 'fan deck'.
Pantone is the system that allows for accurate colour matching in the art community. The system is presented in a fan format, displaying the standardised colour swatches and names.
The idea behind the PMS (Pantone matching system) is to allow designers to colour match specifically and accurately when the design enters the production stage. This allows all printers to be in sync and print to exactly the same colours on the swatches. It is important for graphic designers to consider the paper stock that is being used as this can cause a slight colour variation. The guides that can be purchased from Pantone show the variations and allow designers to plan ahead and only have to print once, saving paper, ink and time.

The Pantone colour system will be an important source to refer to when printing as a graphic designer as it will ensure accuracy in the colour that is produced. I will use the colour watches when printing large amounts of colour because my computer may not be matched to the colours of the printer, making the work I have designed inaccurate.

Study task 1: Final Video

Video Screenshots:

Using the cross to try and stop people from using the door that leads out to the terrace.

Using the arrows to direct people to the last entrance barrier.

Using the cross as a stop symbol to make people use only one side of the stair case.

As a group, we were testing the use of mass and how effective there were at gaining the publics attention and if they recognised them as signs and not just a 'piece of art'. We successfully directed students to the end barrier when entering Leeds College of Art and stop people from walking down particular sides of the stair case. The attempt to stop people from using the door to the outside area of the building didn't work very well as people know that the door is available for use and out of habit didn't really notice the mask as being a sign to stop them from using the door.

"Modern humans probably have a more spontaneous relationship with the straight line than with the curve. Daily encounters with level ground and with all kinds of constructions are primarily based on the two principles of horizontal and vertical. We appreciate rounded forms with the senses rather than the mind"

- Fruitiger, 1989

Our choice to use a circle as the shape of our sign came from the research into Fruitiger as he found that as humans we react to circular signs in a more spontaneous way than to those with straight edges. This is important as we are intervening in areas that people wouldn't even think twice about what direction they take as it is a repeated daily task for them.

The context of where we conducted the intervention is the only element that would improve the findings of our idea, or at least provide a comparison. The reactions from the students within the art school may not have been the same as if we had done this in public. This is because the art students may expect things like this to be going on and may have thought it was a fine art project or something similar. In the context of LCA is may have been considered art, but in public it would have become a sign. 

When watching the other videos, a few important events allowed me to reflect upon some other considerations that I may need to have when designing my sign system within Leeds. A bright yellow sign that one group used made children stop, but not adults. This suggested that the bright colour and the fact that it was at their eye sight may have caught their attention and not the adults. When designing my wayfinding system, I will need to decide on the target audience so that I can think about things such as eyesight and colour.  

Another group made a zebra crossing out of paper to try and get people to stop at it before walking over it. The material choice really impacts how people respond to the intervention as many stepped around it because they didn't want to ruin the paper. The road choice is also important because it was a busy section of path that lots of people use daily to get to one particular place, they may not have observed the new sign as they just expect the route to be as it is every other day. The most successful way to get people to recognise a new intervention is to place a physical object that will obstruct someones pathways in the hope that they will look at it and then follow the directions it is trying to give. 

Studio Brief 1: Wayfinding in Leeds

Trinity Centre

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Trinity is the biggest shopping centre in the city of Leeds, with over 100 shops, bars and restaurants. Trinity spreads across 3 floors, so a successful wayfinding system needs to be in place to direct the customers around easily. In a number of locations throughout the building, there are hanging signs (Figures 1 and 2)showing the exit routes, car parks, nearest streets and where the escalators/stairs are. 

At entrances and near the escalators there are free standing signs (Figures 3 and 4) which display all of the important details about the shopping centre. They show maps pf each floor and a list of shops and where they can be found. The signs are easy to read and understand. Each floor is colour coded, so that the list of shops can match the same coding and customers can easily find what they are looking for. 

The toilet sign is displayed in the same way (Figure 5), but the individual symbols are also stuck onto the walls (Figure 6) to very clearly show that this passage leads to the particular facilities. I think it is interesting how the majority of the information within the shopping centre is symbol based. It shows how powerful symbols are and that words are not a vital part of wayfinding. 

Studio Brief 1: Artist Research

Eric Hu

The work he produces is heavily influences by the research into the nature of graphic design, exploring the standardised production to which designers use today. He experiments with digital technologies within a print-based context. The book he has produced called ‘a thousand characters’ shows how a symbol can be visually displayed in many variations, completely changing the way in which it appears to the audience.

I like the style of his work and it could influence how I use lines and the fluidity of them within my final signage system. I will also make sure that allow research into the production of sign systems heavily influence how I design my own one.

Hassam Rahim

Hassam is an artist and art director originally from Los Angeles, now working out of New York. His work ‘Distillations’ is a collage of overlays images to connect disparate contexts and temporal zones. The associated images share a frame, but also exist in isolation to one another. I find his attempts to visually show the iconicity as constructions of the personal and universal subconscious very engaging, something that can be applied to signage systems as they have to tap into people’s subconscious’ and figure out what will make them follow the instructions.

Julien Priez

Julien was born in Montreuil, France in 1986 and studied Graphic Design and Type Design. Julien specialises in typography and calligraphy. His work is very bold and colourful, a style that I think would work effectively for a signage system as it needs to be noticed and consistent. I like his use of symbols and interesting layouts as it engages the audience and can provoke very specific reactions. The geometrical design style creates posters very visually bold and powerful, something a sign need to be. It needs to stand out from a distance and hold a consistent visual appearance throughout all of the signage. 

Vincent De Boer

I like how each character has the same visual appearance but they are also very different to each other. When designing a system, the common feature needs to be decided upon and stuck to throughout all of the visual production. This will give the signage system that I create more chance of being associated to the particular subject then if there was not a common feature throughout.

The black and white image shows that the colour scheme is not the most vital part of the design as it is still very obvious that these are the same project. The various shades of colour in the pattern is still visible when black and white. It might be important to consider the use of colour when designing my signs, as to whether or not it is actually a vital element or not.

Åbäke

Åbäke is a design studio based in London, founded by a group of people who attended Royal College of Art. A lot of the work focuses on the success that collaborating can bring to a final concept. They are recently famous for their ‘Slow Alphabet’, a font in which each character is released via a different publication over a number of years. This is an engaging way to publish new work and keep people interested in it for a long time. Their tangible work includes posters, cd and record sleeve designs, furniture and installations in art galleries and public spaces. The ‘Limb typography’ project is interesting as once again it focuses on the creations that can come from collaboration. The exhibit invites the visitors to create letters or words by poking their arms through the holes on a black vertically suspended piece of material. The words can only be seen by the passing visitors allowing for a subjective interpretation.

Study task 1: Group idea generation and filming

BRIEF:

In groups of 4 you are to record how members of the public move through and interact with public space. You must record your experiences through video, drawing, photography and writing. 

In order to gain direct experience with the effects supergraphics and wayfinding have on our passage through public space, you are asked to create a diversion, new connection and making someone pause or stop.

The sign must be made using only abstract graphic language and no text. The findings should be presented as a video (2 minutes long) on Friday 25^th November along with other ways of documenting ideas.

Sketchbook should include:
-Video stills
-Drawing
-Photographs
-Research into supergraphics and wayfinding
-Ideas and intentions
-Evaluation

IDEAS:

In response to study task 1, my group began to discuss the ways in which a sign could be placed in a public space. We began to discuss how the location of this sign could impact the amount of people that would notice it and actually take direction from it. When thinking about basing the project on Briggate or in the Trinity centre, we began to consider the fact that people may already know the direction in which they can/can't go in so out of default would not actually notice our sign.

We thought about using tape, paint, clothing, umbrellas and a few other materials to spark ideas on the best way to create our own temporary wayfinder.
The locations we have decided on will be the entrance, a staircase and the elevator of the LCA building.

We decided to create our signage in the form of masks. The sketches show the locations in which we will stand and the symbols we will have painted onto the masks. 

We will be using an SLR to record the results of the interventions.  


FILMING:

We spent the first part of the morning making the masks out of paper plates, coloured tape and elastic bands. This allowed us to begin filming when the morning break began so that we could have enough people to see the intervention.

We chose different locations to stand with the masks on and we filmed from different angles the reactions of the people witnessing the signs. Standing at the door which leads to the terrace area in LCA with the 'cross' mask wasn't as successful as we had hoped. The majority of the people were very surprised and began to question it. The reactions were interesting, but the sign did not stop anyone from walking through the door. This may have been because they are so used to using the door that they didn't think it would actually be shut, or that the sign wasn't forceful enough to make people follow it.

The most successful intervention was found when standing at the entrance barriers in a line, directing people to the end barrier. This provoked the most reactions and the majority of the people did understand the sign system and went to the end barrier.

Standing at the top and bottom of the stairs to make sure people walked on the right side of the staircase worked well considering a lot of people went to walk on the usual side of left.


This study task showed me that by making people think, they may not follow the instruction that you intended because they are more likely to continue to do what they consider to be the norm. It is important to keep the sign system simple, using symbols that are commonly recognised.

Studio Brief 1: Wayfinding

Brief:

Focusing on the subjective nature, design a personal sign system of your own interpretation of the space around you.

Explore poetic signs, imaginary sign systems, conflicting sign systems etc.

The usage, functionality and display (interplay between the objective and subjective) should be considered when resolving your chosen strategy.

Mandatory Requirements:

• Functional navigational wayfinding system, for your selected environment, informed by through research and development
• Range of potential responses explored for the brief
• The identification and selection of an appropriate, consistent typeface
• The development of pictograms for directions and identification of facilities
• The identification and selection of a limited and appropriate colour swatch with associated PMS, CMYK and RGB values

Deliverables:

• Produced at least one sign/supergraphic/etc. at actual size and document it within the appropriate context in Leeds
• Mock-ups (in Photoshop/Premiere/etc.) of the entire system in context
• Minimum of 6 design boards, presenting and discussing the following: 
• Brief Interpretation/Research
• Initial design ideas
• Design development
• Final design/Production
• Evaluation

This studio brief will consist of 3 other study tasks which are to form the main body of research.

1. Wayfinding research

2. Objective signs of subjective things

3. Subjective signs of objective things