Self-generating colour and images
‘Meandering River’ is an audiovisual installation created by onformative, a digital art and design studio based in Berlin. The piece reinterprets the shifting behaviours of rivers by visualising and sonifying their impact on the surface of the earth. This beautiful real-time visualisation is generated entirely by an algorithm with music composed by artificial intelligence (A.I).
Introduction
Colour and image are the two most important visual elements at a designer’s disposal. These elements are often used intuitively and mark out those fortunate people who are visually gifted from those who are not. For this reason, explaining a colour choice or image use can seem complicated at first or hard to defend for inexperienced designers. This chapter will attempt to make sense of our design decision-making by explaining the relevant theory and technical considerations and offer practical advice on colour and image use.
Colour psychology and its importance for digital design are explained before covering how colour is created and applied on television and the Web. In a similar vein, key semiotic theories will be introduced to illustrate how digital images are ‘encoded’ and ‘decoded’ before technical considerations for digital media uses are highlighted. The use of photo libraries and related visual resources are also detailed as part of a designer’s toolbox.
Workshop
The following workshop will help you explore your visual associations and sensibilities when making colour choices. The workshop is intended to last two hours and can be undertaken as a solo activity, although created artefacts would benefit from group discussion at the end.
Downloadable Content
Taste After Taste Workshop (taste-after-taste-workshop-jamie-stane.pdf)