OUGD404: Study Task 1 - Colour Theory

Shortly after having todays lecture on colour and all things related to that such as hue, shades, tints, tones etc. we went on to do a task in small groups. For this we had to choose four Genres from the list below and choose a colour from the Pantone colour guides; one that we believe would represent a typical cover colour choice and one that we consider to be a less conformist yet still interesting option.

-Chick Lit
-Crime
-Fairy Tale
-Fantasy
-Historical Fiction
-Horror
-Humour
-Mystery
-Romance
-Science Fiction
-Thriller
-Western
-Young Adult

Purple, we felt was an appropriate colour for science fiction purely because it feels alien like, more often than not we associate aliens being green or purple or a strange combination of the two colours, hence why we felt purple was suited to Sci-Fi.

On the other hand, given how bizarre and outrageous Sci-Fi can be, we felt a colour that would work well would be yellow given how much of a distinct yet obscure colour it.

Given how western books are related to cowboys, shacks and all things in that era, brown is a typical colour that would be used within western books such as in the examples shown above.

Green on the other hand is not often a colour associated with western times, but I feel it has a bit of rustic shade to it, such that it would work appropriately within books, given it was used in moderation to avoid the book cover becoming overwhelming.

I would say that in most cases of mystery books, black is a colour that is widely used due to how dark and in itself, mysterious it feels. It evokes a feeling of not knowing, in the sense that it feels like the colour is hiding something away behind it's darkness.

But not all mysteries are dark and gloomy, and that's why I feel this like cyan colour would work well with some books, as it could be used as a child's mystery book or something of that nature.

As with horrors, red is a typical colour to use, as it's the colour of blood and more often than not with horrors, blood is involved somewhere along the line. As shown in the two example books above, red works well contrasted with other dark colours to create a horrifying look.

Green is not really a colour you would normally associate with horror but we felt that it could maybe work with maybe an alien related horror, something more of an obscure horror rather than a typical bloody horror.