Color, the very important element in design, gives a lot of information about what the design work is trying to say. It generates interesting visual effects, creates atmospheres, expresses emotion and feelings, conveys meaning and thus provides guidance to the audiences into the world of the specific design work. Getting multiple colors together, with different values and saturations, creates contrast.  And contrast leads to dimension Just like size, shape and position, color tells which objects are in the front, which ones are in the middle and others in the background.  The more dramatic difference the colors have, the more obvious dimension we get in the design.

Usually the color with higher value and saturation appear to be closer to the audience then those with lower value and saturation.  And combining colors with big difference in value and saturation can result to very distinguished dimensions. Objects with this dimension visual effect tend to appear more outstanding and get more attention.  This is because high contrast colors give the distinguished effect of dimension.  Examples can be found in the following situation.  Increasing the difference between the colors of text and its background to get a dramatic contrast can practically enhance the readability of the type.  Therefore, a great color contrast might be used to the main objects in the design for the purpose of making it an outstanding dimension from the background, while the supporting objects are always supposed to be in low color contrast to melt into the background.

The first image is a two-page commercial in the magazine VIA. This is an introduction to the travel agency, who travels mostly to China area, such as Hong Kong.  The page uses 2 major colors – Green and Red.  These two colors are the complementary in the color scheme.  In most design works, they are avoided to be together. It is just like a principle in design field that green doesn’t get along with red.  However, in this example of color contrast, the designer used these colors wisely and made the design a successful one.  First of all, the color theme in the design is green. The background is light green, and the main object in the front of the photo is fresh green.  On the other hand, red, although appear next to green, is not as dominant as green in this design, but just in a supporting role, only showing in the background, out of focus.  This way, the green Chinese style of umbrella is standing out of the photo to give a very appealing first sight to the audience.