In this section, we're going to look at how color and
shape can work as formal elements of your interface design.
So let's start out by looking at color in a little more detail.
One of the main ways that color works is by creating an overall mood.
And this can be really useful in that,
because again it can set the tone if you want to be more serious or more fun.
You might find a color palette that makes your app more believable.
As human beings, we generally respond to colors, and
we respond to them in a very subjective and emotive way.
So let's start out by doing a few exercises and looking at how color works.
And let's take our scientific interface and
let's take all the color away from it and start out with just black and white.
When everything is just black and white we often have connotations with that of
design being very serious, and that stems from cultural connotations of black and
white printing in newspapers, early photography.
But just by adding a simple color we can change those connotations.
When we put yellow and black together for instance,
we use to seeing that to represent danger.
When we see a bright color, like magenta,
we think that that something that's perhaps going to be fun.
So you can see how even just changing one color can create an emotion.
If we start to put together a palette where we've got a range of colors working
together in harmony, we could have a cool palette that might create a very icy or
cold feeling.
And when we start to change those colors, we could create other connotations.
For me, red, white, and blue represents England.
For other people, it might represent a different country.
We could take a palette that comes out of nature, for instance, browns or greens.
And we can build a palette that makes us feel maybe calm, or
makes us feel a connection to nature.
So there are some connotations that come from the real world and
some that are fabricated.
We see blue things, we might think it's a design for
a boy and pink is a design for a girl, but those are just cultural conventions.
Color is quite relative in a lot of ways and quite subjective.
So we have to figure out how to control that and how to try and
control that subjectivity a little bit.
In order to get it to do what we want it to do for our interface, in order for
us to help create an atmosphere, and a mood, as well as a function.
And in terms of function we can use color in many different ways and
a primary one is to think about how color works as navigation within our interface.
So for instance, if you have these three buttons and
I ask you to pick one, I'm pretty sure you're going to press the green button,
just because it looks like it's active.
We're used to thinking that perhaps green makes it one to be picked, but
also it's different from the other buttons.
And we can use color to both create difference and similarity.
So just by changing the other buttons here, the inactive buttons from gray to
a lighter shade of green we build a different kind of relationship.
Now they feel like they have the possibility to all be pressed and
turned to the darker shade of green.
And basically, what we're doing here, is creating a system that has differences and
similarities.
And that can also work in terms of association with other
things that we've experienced before, either in interfaces or the real world.
We think about green as being go or being active, and
red as being stop or being danger.
If we use colors that have a similar relationship,
they can also build a sense of similar functionality.
So here we've got three buttons going from light to dark with a similar hue to them.
And they might feel like they do the same thing but to maybe a different extent.
Whereas if we have three different hues, we feel like that these three different
buttons are going to have three different functions.
We can use color in numerous ways.
We could use it to denote something being active.
Here just the green that's different from the blues suggests that
something has been turned on, or is an active element.
And we can take that same idea and take the green button and
turn it into a red button to suggest it being inactive.
As well as signifying an event or activity color also works as part of a system,
here for instance we have one of three things selected.
If you were to click on a blue button now,
would it turn to red and would the red turn to blue?
As well as showing us what's active, color can also show us what's inactive or
passive.
Here, the element is different, has a more muted color so
we know that it's the thing that is actually not working rather than working.
You could also think about how color can be used to show progression.
In this case, we've got three possible stages, and it feels like we're two-thirds
of the way to completion because we have two out of a possible three areas lit.
We could also look at how color can show absolutely different states but
within the same space.
So one button, one space,
can take on different colors to tell us different things.
So here, for instance, this button is grey.
It's passive, or inactive, which means the user hasn't interacted with it at all.
But once the user goes to interact with it,
the button becomes active, not activated, but active.
So this could be in a touch state or when a mouse is hovering over a button, for
instance.
And once it's actually been pressed, or clicked,
or touched, then it becomes activated.
So the same button is telling the user three different things just
by changing its color.
So now let's look a little bit at shapes and
how we use shapes in user interface design.
We primarily use shapes in two different ways in user interface design.
One is interface elements, the buttons that you click on,
the areas of navigation that you need to go.
And the other is design elements, in other words,
shapes that are mixed up with images that are more looking field.
Our interface elements is primarily functional.
So we're talking about shapes that are worth as part of a system.
But we also often geometric simple to understand easy for the user to access.
When we use shapes designers elements they are often less systematic
much more motive and sometimes more ephemeral.
They're much more about the look and
feel of the interface than they are about the functionality of the interface.
And in this way, they often contribute to that look and feel, and
not to the navigation itself.
In many ways, they could be viewed as non-essential elements.
But my argument would be that while they're no an essential part of
the navigation, they are essential in terms of creating a mood,
creating a sense of individuality and
creating a graphic interface otherwise all interfaces look the same.
Picking a certain kind of shape can have a big effect on the interface, whether
it's a diagonal, or a square, or a circle, for instance - just as a basic form
might make a difference between having a lot of direction,
versus a lot of stasis, versus feeling very organic.
We use shapes for our interface elements because of their functionality,
and it's a certain kind of shape that we use.
Normally ones that are geometric that a simple, that a systematic so
that they can be fast to understand and they can make the system that's fast for
the user to visually learn and to interact with.
We're off to new shapes and
motifs that we're familiar with as buttons in the real world.
But the key thing here is that they have relationship to what is
pressing the button on the active area.
So whether that's the cursor of the mouse or whether it's the finger, we're
building a system that relates to the user and how they interact with the content.
But we're also making a system that's flexible,
where we could label these buttons with anything that we wanted to.
Michael WorthingtonFaculty, Program in Graphic Design
