Review: Colour Logic for Web Design

This book makes up a series of six books called Color Voodoo, explaining the use of colour in different disciplines. Color Logic explains the use of colour in web design. Compiled by Jill Marten, who has a Masters in Fine Arts has in worked in web design as well as architecture and interior design.

As visual communication has become increasingly important, and competition even grater, it has now become important to fully understand the characteristics of colour, its relationships with each other, and how it effects us psychologically. The internet, a relatively new form of interaction allows us to convey a message both through visuals and audio. But what attract our attention most are the colour schemes used on a web site, so it is now important to comprehend the engaging effects of colour.

This book is split into three distinct areas. Part one illustrates the differences between additive and subtractive colour schemes, as well as touching on the use of colour in print. To be able to realise the variations in colour is to make the first step in constructing a visually effective web design.

The second part leads you to achieve colour balance, creating a harmony between two or more colours. To refer a quote ‘Designers are challenged with an inequality of shapes and colours. The goal is to achieve balance — not symmetry’, this sums up perfectly part two.

The third section deals with the three — dimensional effects of colour and its contiguous relationships. Using web pages colour interaction, movement and area is deliberated.