A Brief Primer on Color
Sometime during their school career, most people have at least one section on color. It's the really cool section where students get to play with prisms and are told, somewhat counterintuitively, that white light is made up of all the colors mixed together. (This went against all previous school experience; most of us have known since kindergarten that if you mix all the colors together what you actually get is a murky brownish-black.)
Part of the playing-with-prisms lesson included a color wheel. The color wheel is based on the primary colors — red, yellow, and blue — and then all the intermediate colors — orange, green and purple — are arrived at by mixing adjacent primary colors. When you put it all together in a circle, the result is the color wheel.
If you step back and look at the color wheel, the colors can be grouped together by effect. On one side of the color wheel, there are the warm colors — the reds, oranges and yellows. On the other side, there are the cool colors — the greens, blues and purples. And not making an appearance at all on this color wheel are the neutral colors — white, gray and black.
Designers use the color wheel to help them put together color schemes. While there are variations on the color schemes, broadly speaking there are three types: Monochromatic, Analogous and Complementary.
Monochromatic color schemes use only one color with different values. The shade (adding black), tone (adding gray) or tint (adding white) of the base color can all be varied. This is the simplest of the color schemes.
Analogous color schemes use colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. One color is often dominant in this scheme, and other colors are used to enrich the appearance. In this scheme, mixing cool colors with warm colors doesn't always work well.
Complementary color schemes are made up of two colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. For instance, blue and orange or purple and yellow are both contrasting pairs of colors that are complementary. In this color scheme, cool and warm colors are mixed.
This is a fairly broad overview of color and how it's used in design. It's all important stuff from a marketing perspective. Colors help people understand what it is they are looking at and how it is organized. Colors can also be used to help generate a specific emotional response.
Some useful links:
Color Wheel Pro: A general summary of the different color schemes with illustrations. The authors have also included Pros, Cons and Tips for each color scheme.
Website Tips: A great page if you have a lot of time and interest in web page color schemes. The authors included links to many different resources.
Color Design Rules: Don't be put off by the layout - this is actually a very useful page. It's for art students, but gives a good overview of the different color schemes and even includes a section on the psychology of colors.