Johannes Itten's colour contrast

Johannes Itten is known as one of the first people to identify colour strategies and can be used to invoke a reaction. He in particular would focus on colour harmony, he wrote in his primer book of colours "certain combinations of colours are pleasing, other displeasing or indifferent.". His research devised seven methods for colour co-ordination and utilizing hue's contrasting properties.

The contrast of saturation

A contrast of saturation refers to the difference of purity quality in colours.
From http://www.shutterchronicle.com/2009/03/johannes-itten-on-contrast/
"To darken colour with black deprives them, to different degrees, of their brilliance. Adding gray, or intermittingly black and white, to a colour, will lessen its intensity. Finally, mixing complementary colours will eventually produce a gray hue."

Contrast of light and dark

The opposition of black and white and the colours between them the spectrum known as chromatic colours.

The contrast of extension

He devised, expanding on Goethe's work, a systematical ratio of colour values e.g

yellow | orange | red | violet | blue | green
    9    :     8      :  6   :    3    :   4   :    6
The porportions for compimentary pairs are:

Yellow: violet = 9:3 = 3:1 = 3/4 : 1/4
Orange: Blue = 8:4 = 2:1 = 2/3 : 1/3
Red: Green = 6:6  = 1: 1 = 1/2 : 1/2



The contrast of compliments

Simultaneous contrast

The contrast of hue

The contrast of warm and cool