Avoid Bad Design with White Paint? : Peripheral Vision and Metamerism…

Article showing an optical illusion that demonstrates Peripheral Vision, the white point and Metamerism in Graphic Design….

[...] Avoid bad design with White Paint? [...]

I was searching around your site to see if it was you who commented on Samsung displays, and how they use the same parts as Apple monitors. Doug of BonFX.com just posted a short piece about Apple, hence my search. Was it your good self? I can’t remember.
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I have however, configured OSX so that all the application, and UI chrome is colorless…

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there, I suppose that’s the most important thing—as these colors are directly in your line of vision.

Thanks for your thoughts.

@Richard

Yeah, I think it has something to do with the Gamma?? I’ll find out in time for part 2 of my Color Gamuts articles. Thanks for commenting again…

I have however, configured OSX so that all the application, and UI chrome is colorless…

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I must admit, I’ve been guilty of late by sticking green post-it-notes on the front of my iMac, but I haven’t really been doing color-critical work—just large-format stuff. I’ll let myself off this time.

Grey is a good color for office walls I reckon—but I wouldn’t worry about the pink unless you’re doing color-critical stuff, too

Thanks for commenting…

[...] have written an article about metamerism with another color-illusion there if this subject interests you. Do you know of any other great [...]

[...] favourite colour around my desk is a neutral tone, so my eyes won’t adjust to a alternate white point when designing. My favourite colour used in design when expressing optimism might be orange or yellow. Design [...]

Avoid Bad Design with White Paint? : Peripheral Vision and Metamerism…

To illustrate this, look at the image below. The green bars at the top should look slightly darker than the ones below (dependent on your screen/monitor). This is due to a phenomenon called metamerism, whereby the surrounding colors directly ‘interfe…

about the color thing, I agree that having an office personality is very important. I just like to strike a good balance between “Effectively creating design & Creating design effectively”.

Yeah, I seen your bird logo before, but I couldn’t figure out where. After visiting your own site, I saw one of your comments on CreativeCurio I think.

I think as long as there is colour somewhere, as a creative, you’ll be able to manage.. it just amazes me when you see some offices and there is zero colour.. it doesn’t let the space have a personality I think..

and I’m glad you like my dumb-bird logo

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I used to have an Eye-One color calibrator to create profiles for my Mac, but it became too time consuming…and I never really saw the benefit. So I sold it on Ebay. Now, however, I just rely on the built in calibration tool in OSX 10.5. Do you use Mac or PC?

Everyone will see different colors on their screen due to varied manufacturers and models. I thing PC users also see images darker than Macs, or maybe that’s folklaw??

I think the best you can do within reason is calibrate your screen and work with color profiles. If you get work printed at a particular printer, order one of their printed match-up color charts. Other than that, avoid pink walls

@ Alex

I see what you mean about n office being too sterile, although the article was quite a brief account into the ‘extremes’ of problems that can be caused by glaring colors.

If a designer worked on websites all day, with stark color all around, it wouldn’t make much difference due to the inconsistancy of image display on the web.

However, if I were spending all day editing snow-clad photos for a prestigious calendar company — and I was color-correcting them in photoshop with an image of muti-colored fish as my desktop background, my perception of white may be altered and reflect in my judgement.

Personally, I have a great balance. My walls may be white and my desktop shows an image in grey, but I have inspiration around me. These include colored books, a larva lamp, Reese’s Peanut butter themed mug and a crocodile head, yeah really!

Thanks for stopping by Alex — Lovin’ the Gravatar…

Personally I hate the idea of loading up my computer and having nothing but white hit me in the face.. bright starkness seems so uninspiring..

Same with no posters or bright colours on the walls — again, while it might fiddle with our perception of white, I’d find it far too sterile and cold.. reminds me of the story (or rumor?) of the US Air Force giving their pilots acid, putting them in a padded, white room, and being surprised when they went crazy instead of seeing all the pretty things the hippies would see in the forest.

I think we feed of our environments and to have a colourless environment is to have a colourless mind.. but again, that’s just me

I do agree with you about the post-it notes on the monitor, bluuuuuuurgh.
Nice article, I look forward to the future articles you write on the topic

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BTW, along the same lines, do you have any tips on how to best adjust your monitor so that you are seeing the same lightness/darkness of colors that everyone else sees?