Color

Beginning Graphic Design: Color by GCFLearnFree.org

Watch this brief video about color, and think about how you can use these principles to create a cohesive visual style throughout your book. Whether you choose to use the entire spectrum, only black and white, or limit yourself to a couple colors, each page should look like it relates to the pages before and after it. Although you will be working on each page separately, keep in mind that they will all be assembled into a single object.

Waterbirds of Michigan: A Pop-Up Field Book by Esther Licata and Nicholas Danish is a great example of a well thought out limited color palette. Esther is an illustrator and printmaker, and applied her knowledge of color theory to create screenprints using only orange, blue, black, and the white of the page. Orange and blue are complementary and eye catching, while white and black are neutral and create bold contrasts. Note how the orange is a lighter value than the darker, less saturated blue. This gives the colors enough contrast to prevent them from vibrating together painfully.