Colour

The colour wheel is a product which is placed in terms of colours chromatic relationships.  When making a magazine the idea is to make it eye catching, and pleasing to the reader to want to look at. Using harmonising colours allows the designer of the magazine to create exactly want the audience look for, it also allows the magazine to have its very own colour scheme which most magazines take in and us for every issue, this means when those colours are present customers automatically think of that particular magazine. Using opposite colours creates an unpleasing cover and makes it look very messy and not appealing to the reader. So the colour wheel helps us avoid any problems with colour.
The colour wheel is made up of three main sections:

Primary Colours: These are the three colours in which start the base of every over colour, these can not be made up by any other colour, these are Red, Blue, Yellow.

Secondary Colours: These colours are made up by mixing two Primary Colours together, these are Green, Purple and Orange.

Tertiary Colours: These are made up of mixing a Primary Colour and a Secondary Colour together. The Primary colour is normally the main colour used at a ratio of 2:1.

These sections are then separated into even smaller sections. Warm Colours, Cold Colours, Harmonising Colours, Complementary  Colours, Contrasting Colours, Netural Colours.

Cold colours

The colour wheel can be split into two parts, cold and warm colours. Cold colours are usually blues, greens, and purples. These all sit in this area as they as very dark and dull and are usually associated with cold places mentally through nature. These colours do not mix well with warm colours are they are complete contrasts. Magazines based on nature or home furnishing normally use dark colours as they are neutral.

Warm Colours.

Warm colours are extremely vibrant and bright they consist of red, yellows and oranges. They are usually within Pop and younger target audience magazines as they are loud and exciting making the magazine look more interesting and fun. Due to being bright they usually cancel out cold colours and 

make them look odd within the magazine and do not ,mix well. 

Harmonising Colours.

These colours are next to one another on the colour wheel, these are colours that are likely to go together and create a aesthetically pleasing look as they compliment each other.

E.g Red & Purple

Yellow & Orange

Blue & Green

Complementary Colours.

These colours are located opposite each other on the colour wheel , these colours are used to make things look vibrant, they have to be used carefully as they may create an annoying and ugly effect. These colours are not good for text.

Contrasting Colours.

These are colours that do not fit within any of the same categories, for example blue and yellow would not work well together unless certain tones were chosen and they were used extremely carefully. The blue is a cold colour and the yellow a warm, the blue would look very dull and the yellow would over take this with its vibrancy. Also red and green contrast as they are so far apart from one another on the colour wheel, The further away the more contrasting the colours are set to be and not look well together.

Neutral Colours.

These colours are ones such as grey, black, white, beige, camel and ivory. These are very subtle colours and have many undertones, for example camel, would be made of yellow and brown and then added white to lighten it to create the camel. Ivory is majority white with a hint of yellow in it, Beige may have an undertone of pink or gold which can cause the colour to have a different looks so you have to be careful when choosing other colours to go with them and make sure you check the undertones.