Colour Research

To allow my final product to look professional and connote the correct genre themes and ideas for my audience, I need to explore the use of colour before I create my product. By acting as one of the more important factor in terms of aesthetic beauty, colour plays a pivotal role in the success of my product. The colour scheme which I choose must fit the genre themes and stereotypes of other products in the market place, alongside allowing specific areas to stand out accordingly. 

I have decided to explore a range of colour schemes through website 'Adobe Kulor' / 'Adobe Color' alongside colour from current magazines. 

By looking at a range of current regional magazines on the market place, on the whole they use bland/lighter colours, which work alongside the background image. However this isn't always the case. Regional magazines seem to use a colour scheme which works with the background image and themes of the page as oppose to a scheme throughout the whole magazine. Whites and blacks are used widely, as shown through Levi Strauss' theory of Binary Opposition which states opposites attract and work well together. Whites and blacks stand out from the background images and also stand out from each other. Colours on regional magazines also seem to follow seasonal colours - for instance in the summer brighter colours are used on their magazines, and in the winter paler colours are used to connote the seasons. Finally, due to regional magazines usually focusing around stunning photographic images, it's important that the colours of type and graphic on the page doesn't detract from the main images.


It's important for the colour scheme to be gender neutral as this would allow my particular audience to be attracted to my product. I have been looking through a range of different colour schemes on Adobe Color to try and gain an understanding of what colours look attractive together and what don't.

I have chosen to look at 'Neutral Blue' to start off with because I think this is the kind of range which I need to be looking at. However, I think it will depend on the cover image and the colours contained in that. Perhaps I could incorporate a wider range of brighter colours to compliment these. I also like 'Sandy Stone Beach Ocean' because of the particular shades used and the way that I can image this particular scheme used in a real regional magazine.

The other two schemes I picked out, 'Watermelon' and 'Tech Office', both use slightly brighter colours and connote a warmer theme - perhaps that of a summer/autumn addition of a regional magazine as oppose to winter months. The use of reds and pinks allow for the content in these colours to stand out alongside that in the duller colours. 

After having looked at a range of different colour techniques and ideas, I think that I am going to explore Adobe Color when it comes to the creation and construction of my magazine. I will also keep in mind the use of colour on current regional magazine to ensure i fit convention and represent my audience correctly. I am now going to create my own colour palate of a rough idea of the colours that I want to use in my own magazine - this will allow me to focus my ideas and gain an understanding of the colours that I want to use.

I have decided to pick a range of colours - some inspired by the research done above, and some correlate to the images which I hope to take for my magazine. I have decided to choose brighter colours alongside ones that stand out against each other and also colours which aren't so harsh on the eye, ones which I can use for text which I don't need to stand out so much. The black and white allow me to oppose colours - a basic choice however a necessary one - and the green and brown allow for contrast alongside the brighter yellow which will grab my audience's eye on first glance.