Terminology

Member lesson

The words for colour

Lesson 4 of 11 in Terminology.

What is HUE, Saturation, Brightness and Luminance! · Steve Wood
Lesson

Colour vocabulary splits into three groups: words for describing a colour, words for specifying one, and words for what happens when it is reproduced. Confusing the three is how a conversation about a palette turns into a conversation about a printer.

A doodle of three scenes: a hand on a colour wheel, a swatch book beside a screen with sliders, and one printed sheet looking different under a warm lamp and a cool lamp.
Three kinds of colour words as three scenes: a colour wheel for describing a colour, a swatch book for naming it exactly, and a print checked under two lamps.
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  1. Question 1, locked

    A guideline gives the brand colour as one hex value and nothing else. What breaks?

    • Screens render hex differently, so a Pantone is needed as the on-screen master instead
    • Hex cannot carry saturation, so every tint and shade has to be mixed by eye
    • Hex is a screen instruction, so the press and the ink mixer have nothing to work from
    • Hex describes hue only, so value has to be stated separately for print
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “Which colour it is. Red, blue, green.”

    • Disruptive
    • Hue
    • Iconic
    • Curated
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “How pure it is. From grey to full intensity.”

    • Tint, tone, shade
    • Saturation
    • Value
    • Hue

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