THE COLOUR TOOL
Do you sometimes find it difficult to explain colour choices to a client? Do you teach colour theory to students? Why is it so confusing to choose colours for your home? Do you really understand what saturation is? What is a complementary colour?
Kolormondo is a tool for teaching colour, discussing colour choices, to find a certain hue and to see colour relations. It is a bridge between the expert and the beginner.
In Kolormondo, colours are presented so that everyone can understand. It is obvious, very simple and based on well-established knowledge from thinkers like Runge and Goethe. And yet, it is seen as a revolution for colour comprehension.
Knowledge about colour and how to match colours is no longer a secret for a selected few! Kolormondo will help identify any colour – and its constituents – by looking at its neighbours. You might use it to identify a range of colours for an upcoming design project. It is also ideal for finding complementary colours or inspire you to find a combination of colours you have never even thought of!
The Kolormondo colour tool is used by schools and universities, interior and graphic designers, product developers, home decorators, DIY-lovers, lecturers, and in the fashion, furniture, textile industries, as well as by hairdressers and florists – the list is endless. And of course – it is a beautiful design object!
Colour can be quite tricky
Colour influences every aspect of our lives; how we dress, enjoy food and look at art. We know what time it is by looking at the colour of the sky. The taste of an apple is judged by its colour. Men (at least in the western world) are more attracted to women wearing red than blue. Nature helps us to identify danger by the combination of yellow and black. You cross the road when the sign is green. Etc
Colour is therefore one of the most important ways of manipulating others, of course used for instance to attract consumers. Colour is crucial in most industries.
So it is a good idea to learn more about colour. But, the subject is complex. And there are many different colour systems and hardly any teaching aids. So where to begin? Is it in optics, psychology, chemistry – or maybe in art history? And how do you answer questions like “Are the yellow walls in my room still yellow at night when the room is dark?”
To talk about colour and make yourself understood can also be difficult. The names of hues are either technical – “RS0580Y70R” – or vague and subjective, such as “lavender”. Colour terms, like “saturation”, “croma” and “value” are not known to most people. Colour charts, just like maps of the world, are of limited use. They give neither a general view, nor the relations between colours. Digital colour tools, such as in Photoshop, are useful, but hard to understand, at least for beginners. The explanation is that they are only two-dimensional.
Colour as from now – understand and discuss colour
Kolormondo invites you to systematically navigate between colours and explore how they blend into each other. Kolormondo, in the shape of a globe, is a “world of colour”. While it may be difficult to figure out how to get from San Francisco to Tokyo on a flat paper map, the same journey becomes easy to plot when looking at a globe. You fly west – not east as it would appear on the paper map. In the same way, Kolormondo creates an understanding of colour by using three dimensions. The connection between colours – purple, burgundy, and brown, for instance – becomes clear. The Kolormondo globe has a white North Pole while the South Pole is black. Following the Equator, you find the most saturated hues, those that constitute the colour circle. The closer you get to the white North Pole the lighter the colours become, and if you go south towards the black South Pole the colours get darker. Towards the globe’s core, colours become gradually less saturated and turn grey instead. Imagine a pillar or a column between the North and the South Pole — this is the grey scale.
Kolormondo is based on CMYK. Cyan, Magenta and Yellow form a triangle on the ”Equator piece”, i e the largest round piece of Kolormondo. All colours are created out of these three. Black is only used for the black at the South Pole.
