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Colour schemes 0:52
A 52-second explainer of Colour schemes, narrated over the same demo you can try yourself.
Try the interactive Colour schemes demo
What this video covers
A colour scheme is a set of hues chosen by their positions on the colour wheel so they work together. The common recipes - complementary (opposite), analogous (neighbouring), triadic (evenly spaced) - are just rules for picking angles, giving you palettes that feel harmonious instead of arbitrary, from one base colour.
Spin the base hue and the whole palette moved with it, always in step - because each scheme is just a fixed set of angles on the wheel. Complementary snapped to the opposite side and crackled with contrast; analogous hugged the neighbours and went calm; triadic spread out into something vivid but balanced. The harmony was geometry all along.