COLOR

Understand why color works.

Color can attract attention, establish hierarchy, communicate identity, create emotion, and change the way we experience a design.

Explore color theory, relationships, systems, psychology, accessibility, and practical methods for developing effective palettes.

Learn to move beyond choosing colors because they "look good" and begin making intentional color decisions.

The working knowledge of color

Color is the most emotional tool in the designer's kit and the most technical. This part of the library moves from the fundamentals — what hue, value, and saturation actually are — through the ways colors combine, the systems that name them, the feelings they carry, and the accessibility rules that keep work usable for everyone.

Finish with methods, not recipes: a set of repeatable ways to build palettes that hold together, work in context, and survive contact with real projects.

The topics

Color Theory Basics

Hue, value & saturation

Every color can be described by three properties. Hue is the color's name on the wheel — red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Value is how light or dark it is, from near-white tints to near-black shades. Saturation (also called chroma or intensity) is how vivid or grayed-out it appears.

Color Relationships

How colors combine

Colors behave differently next to each other — Josef Albers called color the most relative medium in art, and the relationships between hues are where that relativity becomes usable. Complementary colors sit opposite on the wheel and energize each other; analogous colors sit side by side and calm each other; triadic schemes balance three hues evenly around the wheel for rich but stable combinations.

Color Systems

Naming, matching & specifying

A color on your screen is not a color on paper, and neither is a color in a brand guideline. Color systems exist to pin colors down. Pantone matches ink across printers and materials; RGB describes light for screens; CMYK describes the four-ink printing process; HEX and HSL are the web's notations for the same idea.

Color Psychology

What colors carry

Colors arrive with baggage — cultural, biological, and personal. Red reads as urgency and appetite, blue as trust and calm, green as nature and growth, yellow as optimism and caution, black as luxury or authority. Much of this is real and consistent; some of it is folklore, and nearly all of it shifts across cultures — white means purity in one wedding tradition and mourning in another.

Color Accessibility

Contrast, vision & inclusion

Roughly one in twelve men and one in two hundred women has some form of color-vision deficiency, and far more read on screens in bright sun, at small sizes, or with low vision. Accessible color means two things: enough contrast between text and its background, and never carrying meaning by color alone — the error state needs an icon or label, not just a red tint.

Building Palettes

From instinct to method

A palette is not five colors you like — it is a working system with roles: a background, a text color, an accent, a signal, and the neutrals in between. Methods exist because instinct collapses under deadline. Start from a source with built-in logic — a single hue's tints and shades, a photograph worth stealing from, or a brand color that everything must support.

Put it into practice

Try

The Three-Color Limit

20 minutes · Beginner

Design a simple sign using exactly three colors, then rebuild it with a completely different three.

Try

Value Before Hue

15 minutes · Intermediate

Convert a palette to grayscale to check whether contrast works without color.

Keep exploring

DESIGN FOUNDATIONS

Learn

Start with the fundamentals.

Every strong design begins with an understanding of the fundamentals.

Explore the elements and principles designers use to organize information, establish hierarchy, create relationships, direct attention, and communicate ideas.

Learn about balance, contrast, scale, rhythm, alignment, proximity, grids, Gestalt principles, and more—and discover how these concepts work together to create meaningful visual communication.

TYPOGRAPHY

Learn

Type doesn't just say something. It communicates something.

Typography gives language a visual voice.

Learn how typeface selection, scale, spacing, hierarchy, alignment, and composition influence how information is read and understood.

From the anatomy of a letterform to expressive typography and complex page systems, discover how designers use type to create clarity, personality, emotion, and meaning.

IMAGE

Learn

Think beyond the picture.

Images can inform, persuade, document, provoke, and tell stories.

Explore photography, illustration, collage, art direction, image-making, and the relationship between image and typography.

Learn how to select, create, crop, manipulate, and combine imagery with purpose—and how technical decisions such as resolution, format, and reproduction affect the final result.

LAYOUT & COMPOSITION

Learn

Give ideas structure.

Composition determines how information is organized and how the eye moves through a design.

Learn how designers use grids, alignment, scale, white space, hierarchy, proportion, and visual relationships to transform separate elements into a unified system.

Good composition doesn't simply organize a page. It helps people understand it.