The title of this post refers to a color theory about how retinas process antagonizing information from three cones; in short, differences in the three are perceived first. When green and red are on top of each other, some users may not be able to distinguish between the two colors; plenty of whitespace for heavy contrast eliminates this issue.

When I give a very brief overview of color theory to my introductory classes in Media Studies for their first web design projects, I encourage them to think about how to cross the color wheel. The tension between traditional complementary color pairs (purple/yellow, blue/orange, green/red) may be easier for my students to grasp since the University of Virginia’s colors are blue and orange—they grapple with ugly implementations of this color scheme daily.

The usual reactions to the red and green pair are: “it can’t be used much,” “it’s just for Christmas marketing,” “it looks unnatural,”

to which I offer first an organic example image I took this weekend:

and then turn from the symbiotic relationship pictured above to the artificial world of advertising; the examples below show the pair working best with plenty of whitespace and thick white borders, alternately juvenile, cheerfully retro, and pleasingly prehistoric:

Attempting to relate the red/green pair to a familiar logotype, I sometimes refer to a grocery store chain outpost near campus, Harris Teeter (I refuse to post the abomination on kthread).

My favorite usage of the green and the red is the Bacardi Mojito promotional site for the drink and teeth whitening in its various iterations:

2003

2005

2006

While I do think it was a mistake to soften the fantastic crimson lipstick shade of 2005 and embrace the ubiquitous reflection logotype and Century Gothic font, I admire the clever reworking of the art from 2003; one almost doesn’t notice the brown leather necklace tethering the model to the drink in the latest pale version; the white gradient has been applied so thoroughly that her neck ends off being as white as the wrapper around the top of the liquor bottle—the better to see her with, perhaps.

This post has been edited and the comments removed to honor the request of one commenter who feels, as I do, that the debate in the comments did not reflect the best of the Media Studies community at the University of Virginia. A former student did mention that the examples of the red/green color scheme were useful, so I have retained most of the text and images.

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Posted Tuesday, October 31st, 2006, 1:48 pm | Filed in Design, Pedagogy. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.