Packaging Design - An Introduction
Colour and Colour Palette:
Basics of colour:
The human eye sees colour before the brain recognizes imagery in the form of shapes, symbols, words, or other visual elements. Seeing colour is a complex process. The National Bureau of Standards estimates that the human eye can distinguish more than 10 million different colour.
Colour Interaction:
Colour wheel:
The traditional colour wheel is divided into three primary colours and three secondary colours. This colour continuum includes all the intermediate hues produced as each one overlaps the adjacent hue. Colours opposite each other on the colour wheel are complimentary.
Colour terminology:
Understanding colour terminology helps to effectively communicate about colour. Colour communicates psychologically by creating mental association. This mental association with colour is what determines an individual’s perception of an object or its surroundings. Although colour connotations change over time, for consumers from similar cultural and geographic backgrounds fundamental meanings remain consistent.
Colour associations vary:
Colour connections are both product and category specific, however an understanding of colour associations is an important factor in the design process.
Brand building and colour:
Many brands that once had as few as ten products in their family may now have has as many as few thousand. With this explosion of brand families comes the need for more colours to differentiate between product varieties and to distinguish product from the competitors.
Packaging design and colour association:
Scroll through the marketplace and determine which packaging design and colours best match the following characteristics:
• Appetizing, Fun, Strong, Bold, Original, Trendy, Efficacious, Serious, Urban,
• Energetic, Sophisticated, Youthful
Key points about colour:
• Consider colour as it communicates the designer’s personality.
• Apply colours across product lines in a coordinate colour scheme and across the packaging structures, materials, and substrates of a brand.
• Match colour from the computer to the specified colour for the final printed material.
A course in Design of Packaging:
• Basics of colour
• Colour Associations
• Brand Building
• Design Tips in Packaging Design
