Colour

The monochromatic representations we so readily accept in the visual media are tonal stand-ins for colour, for what is, in truth, a chromatic world, our richly coloured universe. While tone is related to questions of survival and is therefore essential to the human organism, colour has stronger affinity to the emotions. It is possible to think of colour as the aesthetic frosting on the cake, rich, and in many ways useful, but not absolutely necessary for creating visual messages.

“Colour is loaded with information and one of the most pervasive visual experiences we all have in common. It is, therefore, an invaluable source for visual communicators. In the environment we share the associate meaning of the colour of trees, grass, sky, earth and on endlessly to where we see colour as a common stimulus. And there, we associate meaning.”

We know colour also under a broad category of symbolic meaning. Red means something, for instance, even where it does not have any environmental connection. The red that is associated with anger has been carried over in the "red flag (or cape) wave in front of a bull." The colour red has little significance for the bull, who has no sensitivity to the colour, but only to the fact that the cape or flag moves. Red means anger, and love, and warmth, and life, and maybe a hundred other things. Each colour has as many meanings, associative and symbolic. Thus, colour offers an enormous vocabulary of great usefulness in visual literacy.

Since perception of colour is the single most strongly emotional part of the visual process, it has great force and can be utilised to express and reinforce visual information to great advantage. Colour not only has universally shared meaning through experience, but it also has separate worth informationally through symbolically attached meaning. In addition to the highly negotiable colour meaning, each of us has our own personal subjective colour preferences. We choose our own colour statements and settings. But there is little analytic though or concern about what methods or motivation we use to arrive at our own choices in terms of the meaning and effect of colour. Whether we think about it or not, realise it or not, we tell the world a great deal when we make a colour choice.

Texture

Texture is the visual element that frequently serves as a stand-in for the qualities of another sense, touching. But, in fact, we can appreciate and recognize texture either by touch or sight individually, or by a combination of both. It is possible for a texture to have no tactile quality, only optical, like the lines of type on a printed page, or polka dots on material, or crosshatched lines in a doodle. Where there is actual texture, the tactile and optical qualities coexist, not like tone and colour which are unified in their comparable and even value, but separately and uniquely, affording individual sensation to the eye and the hand, even though we project onto both strong associative meaning. What sandpaper looks like and what sandpaper feels like have the same intellectual meaning, but not the same value. They are singular experiences which may or may not suggest each other under certain circumstances. The judgment of the eye is usually checked on by the hand by actual touching. Is it really smooth or does it just look that way? Is that an indentation or a raised mark?

Texture has reference to the composition of a substance through minute variations on the surface of the material. Texture should serve as a sensitive and enriching experience.

“At the 1967 Montreal Expo, the 5+ Comingo Pavilion was designed for visitors to explore the quality of their five senses. It was a popular and enjoyable exhibit. People sniffed away at a series of funnels offering a variety of odours, even though they suspected, and justifiably, that some would be unpleasant. They listened, they looked, tasted, but they stood hesitant and inhibited in front of the yawning holes designed to be reached into blindly.”

What did they fear? It appears that the natural, free, "hands on" investigation approach of the baby or young child has been conditioned out of the adult. Whatever the reason, the result starves one of our richest senses.

But in this increasingly simulated and plastic world, the problem arises infrequently. Most of our textural experience is optical, not tactile. Not only is texture faked rather convincingly in plastics and printed material and faked fur, but, also, much of what we see that is painted, photographed, and filmed convincingly presents texture that is not there. If we touch a photograph of silky velvet, we do not have the convincing tactile experience the visual clues promise.

“Meaning is based on what we see. This fakery is an important factor in survival in nature; animals, birds, reptiles, insects, fish, take on the coloration and texture of their surroundings as a protection against predators. Man copies this camouflage method in war in response to the same needs for survival that inspired it in nature.”