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Episode
59

Creating a Colour Palette

An interview with
Greg Gunn

Introduction

How do you select the most appropriate colour for a logo? How about selecting the perfect supporting colour palette? What colour mode should you be working in?

In this weeks podcast Ian interviews Greg Gunn to answer these questions, and to discover more about his new training course, Colour for Creatives. Greg is a Los Angeles based Illustrator and Animator working as Creative Director for Blind, a brand strategy design consultancy.

Greg Gunn Interview Transcription

Ian Paget: One of the main reasons why I wanted to get you on is because I wanted to do an episode on colour theory for some time and I’m aware that you’ve worked on a colour training course with The Futur and I thought it’d be a great opportunity to have a conversation around colour and also to help promote that.

I’m just going to jump straight in on one of the biggest questions I know most of the audience will be wanting to know. When you’re working on a project, whether it’s a logo or any other graphic design-related project, you generally need to pick one primary colour, how would you go about choosing what that colour is?

Greg Gunn: Well, usually I just hang a colour wheel on the wall. I grab something sharp nearby like a pen or pencil. I put my hand over my eyes and I just throw it as hard as I can against that. No, that’s a really good question.

Colour is one of those strange and subjective things. In my opinion, it’s part art, part science with much more emphasis on the art part. In terms of picking a primary colour, I find that doing some conceptual thinking before you get to the colour part helps. For instance, if you are working on a branding project, let’s say, and you were trying to design a style guide, which is typography, photocell, all this kind of stuff, there should be some bigger idea and concept at work that will help you inform how you design, what visual language you use, the typography and fonts you select.

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