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Design
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Return to 'The Significance and Usage of Individual Colours'
The Red Array
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To the left is the complete red array. The following breaks this array down for a closer look at different sections.
To the right, observe the fire red.
Vermilion (Mercuric sulphide) • Scarlet.
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Description
The strongest of the yellowish reds, so brilliant that it has been compared with fire. Can be imperfectly mixed from magenta and orange.
Psycho-factor
It shares the stimulant qualities of the florid orange hues but adds a ‘volcanic potential’ through appearing to enlarge and advance.
Aesthetic Effects
The fire reds can be very potent even in small areas. They will enhance turquoise; and will induce turquoise into almost any weak colour placed next to it, especially into neutrals, giving a turquoise glow. They also bring surfaces forward in appearance and seem to enlarge them.
E xamples
Interiors
The fire reds give an en expression of status and power as if in heraldic blazon. Impressive and challenging in exhibition design and display. Difficult for many but the most extrovert to live with in the domestic interior on walls, floor and ceiling, unless substantially relieved by say white woodwork, or gold panelling and plenty of relatively neutral areas, perhaps with a few carefully chosen turquoise motifs to absorb blue willo’the wisp after-images that there are likely to be.
Products
Very small products can be made more conspicuous as well as bright and attractive using the fire reds. Red cars of this hue can be seen easily, and reasonably well by people with red defficient vision which is probably one of the reasons that red cars are involved in fewer accidents than cars of many other colours. Another reason is that they will appear a little nearer than colours of most other hues. However, these reds and the bluer reds are not so good as the orange and yellow colours on unlit roads at night, being less visible than the light blues and greens. (Q.v. Purkinje Phenomenon under Optical Illusions)
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To the left is Blood Red.
Crimson and Carmine • Cadmium Red (Cadmium Sulpho-Selenide) • Signal Red and Spectrum Red. |
Description
These reds are usually thought of as pure red, neither yellowish nor blueish, hence the names Signal Red and Spectrum Red. (In fact all hues at full strength are spectral hues.) Can be mixed from magenta and orange.
Psycho-factor
These reds seem to carry and absolute of command which must take precidence over all else.
Aesthetic effects
These reds give a green afterimage, which can be minimised by including green in the colour scheme. Surfaces of these reds are likely to appear nearer than they are (see Colour and Illusion).
Examples
Interiors
Imperious but forbidding in large areas unless relieved by, for example, framing with neutral, contrasting or harmonising colours. As with the fire reds, they’re used a great deal in public houses where their apparent warmth is also considered to be thirst-inducing. Because of its universal use in factories as a danger signal and the fact that it is virtually invisible to many colour defectives red danger signs have been recommended to encorporate a square shape as distinct from a circle (which is used with green to symbolise Safety and the location of the Rest Room and First Aid).
Products
Small items with a gloss finish in these reds can be smart and eye-catching, at their best centres of attention within a more neutral scheme. |
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To the left are the Glaze Reds.
Burgundy • Cardinal Red • Ruby • Wine • Alizarin Crimson (Dihydroxyanthraquinone) |
| Description These are colour effects which in the past were more often arrived at by glazing (that is the used of very finely ground colouring agent, a dye, to form a translucent layer over a light reflective base). Though many different colours can be glazes, the reds with the bluish cast may be said to have had pride of place. At their best they can be quite dark and strong. Can be mixed from scarlet, magenta and black.
Psycho factor
In these colours, the fire of red is overcast by coldness and darkness, making these colours more ‘civilized’ or at least the more constrained reds. Based on the ideas of Lüscher, in psychological symbolism the glaze reds give an effect as if a translucent bluish red has been glazed over a strong vermillion, conjuring up the idea of the 'pale cast of thought' overshadowing the 'fire red' of the ‘libido’, thereby creating a state as if of moral and ethical responsibility.
Aesthetic effects
These colours are a good foil to other lighter and bluer or redder colours.
Examples
Interiors
Over a large area these colours produce, at worst, a sultry and opressive atmosphere, and at best an air of dignity.
Products
Small products allocated for rather responsible purposes such as diaries, account books, and so on, are traditionally in these colours or Maroon, a bit duller. Equipment in these colours tends to be in high gloss. |
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Finally, the Russets.
Tan • Russet • Earth Red (Calcined ferric oxide) • Bokhara Red • Terracotta • Egyptian Red. |
Description
Warm, weak reds of mid tonality. These are the traditional reds of European humanist art from Greece and Rome until the 19th century. Can be mixed from Scarlet or Crimson with black, white or greys.
Psycho factor
Warm friendly and human colours.
Aesthetic effects
Substantial and elemental effects can be created with these colours. They mix with white and/or black and/or yellow ochre to give all the colours of classical decor. The colours are the perfect example of an ‘ecological’ palette, giving gradations of the colours of human skin, the rhinds of fruits, the hues of geological stones and parched landscape in addition to the greyed yellows and bluish slate colours.
Examples
Interiors
These reds are at their best in ecological or classical schemes including the earth colours and their mixtures.
Products
All the earth reds can be reproduced in teracotta ceramics. |
Copyright © 2005 Micro Academy.
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