OUGD504 - Block Colour Trials

Adding Block Colour within the Design

Within 'A Decade in Dubai' it was found that block colour was used alongside imagery as a way of reflecting aspects of Dubai and created a sense of wealth and opulence through the use of gold, silver and blacks within the book. Also using cream tones reflected the sandy landscape within Dubai.

In the current design, although the layout has been decided it was found that perhaps the design was too minimalist with a white coloured background. 

Adding colour to the lines 

It was considered that the beach line could be made yellow / gold to make reference to the physical colour of the beach. However the use of this colour on a plain background wouldn't stand out very much so bock colour would have to be added behind to make it stand out.

As an alternative blue could also be used to reflect the sea which would work better on lighter coloured background. The road line will be kept black to reflect the tarmac of the road and its colour.  

Applying Block Colour to the Background  

It was considered that sandy tones could be used for the whole back ground colour to reflect the desert landscape. Using the eyedropper tool to take colours from aspects of the images meant that the background reflected a sense of the place / landscape. Using on ecolour for the background continued the minimalist design and was less intense than the strips of block colour that had been used previously. However, in order to get the exact tone on the screen,  this would meant the background colour would have to be printed. When printing large areas of colour it can become obvious that its been printed because of line within the design. However printing directly onto a white page would allow the images to be more vibrant. The use of the lighter toned colours for the backgrounds creates contrast making the images stand out more.

Using Coloured Paper

It was thought that coloured papers could possible be found that were a similar the colour swatches from the images, although not exact. Printing onto coloured paper would also mean that the images would be duller when compared with printing on white paper as the ink will be put over an existing colour. To reflect the landscape of the desert and the beach a sandy coloured paper could be used. In reference to Arabic Scripture finding an off white textured paper could create the impression of the content being printed in a traditional book. The images would also stand out well against these lighter colours, howeve rthis means that the beach line will not be able to be yellow as the design will not show up on a light stock very well.

Adding Coloured Strips

To allow the yellow line to be more visable it was considered adding block colour to the design by having strips running horizontally across the page behind the lines. This would be similar to the use of block colour in  'A Decade in Dubai' and would also emphasise the grid system used within the design, whilst separating the content from the lines. 

The combination of black and gold would link to the cover colours which reference the tarmac and beach, however this looked too heavy and oppressive. Creating strips of colour that followed the grid system also interfered with the layout of the imagery as the boxes and imagery merged. Having coloured strips behind the boxes meant that they became the main focus of the design rather than the imagery, which was not wanted.

Going Forward

From the experiments with colour on the pages it was thought that using coloured paper would be the most effective way of adding colour to the design. Having coloured paper would mean that there would be a consistent tone whereas when printed block colour often becomes stripy. It was decided that using a light off cream coloured paper, to reflect the paper within Arabic scripture, would allow the images to be the main focus of the design whilst also tying in well with the other Arabic references within the book. Printing a similar colour to that of scripture paper could work however would not allow the texture of the actual paper to come through , which is important as the paper aims to reflect a written book. The use of the light coloured paper means the beach line will have to be blue to show up.  By having a singular background colour means that the design retains its minimalism and allows the images to be the most dominant thing.