Colour Literacy Forum #13 : Colour MIXconceptions: Comparative Mixing Processes

The Colour Literacy Forum is an international, collaborative effort to align university-level colour education with current design needs in the culture. The goal of the Forum is to connect faculty, students, and administrators with interdisciplinary professionals to provide cutting-edge research, curricula, tools, and resources.

The Colour Literacy Forum is a virtual platform featuring presentations and interactive conversations focused on updating and expanding 21st century colour education at the university level. The goal of this global collaboration is to develop an interdisciplinary STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) model that positions colour as a Meta-discipline and aligns colour education with current needs in the culture, providing cutting-edge resources, and offering dynamic networking opportunities for all stakeholders.

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2025 Series: Facts and Myths About Color

Colour MIXconceptions:
Comparative Mixing Processes

Friday October 10, 2025, 11am ET

Talk 1: Colours and Mixing

Yellow and blue make green. Yellow and blue make grey. Yellow and blue make white. Yellow and blue make pink. The results from these mixtures will be illustrated. The difference between the results is due to the differences in the mixing processes. But it is not yellow and blue as colours that are being mixed. It is paints, inks and lights. It is these that contribute to the stimulus that enters the eyes where the response triggers neural signals for transmission deeper into the brain. It is only in the brain that conscious sensations of colours are experienced. The Natural Colour System is a system of colour appearances and can be used to plot the results of mixing paints, inks, and lights, to reveal problems and possibilities. The term ‘primary colours’ is usually applied to the paints, inks and lights that are being mixed. But the term can also be applied to the attributes of appearance in the sensation such as yellowness or blueness. The term ‘complementary colours’ is also applied to pairs of paints, inks, or lights that can be mixed to produce a sensation of a neutral white or grey. Complementary lights mix additively to white. Complementary paints and inks mix subtractively to dark grey. Additive and subtractive mixtures do not deliver complementary colour pairs that appear the same. To reconcile a colour circle based on additive mixture with one based on subtractive mixture the colour circle can be treated as elastic so that intervals between colours can be stretched or compressed to move from one set of relationships to the other.

The Speaker:Paul Green-Armytage

Paul Green-Armytage was born and educated in England, graduating as an architect. He had some ten years’ experience as a practising designer in England, Canada and Australia, working as an architect, exhibition designer and set designer for television, before taking up a position as senior lecturer in charge of the first year program in design at what is now Curtin University in Western Australia. Early in his academic career he developed a research interest in colour. Green-Armytage was awarded his PhD in 2005; his thesis was titled “Colour, Language and Design”. He has contributed papers at many national and international conferences, several by invitation, served as a member of the executive committee of the International Colour Association, and as president of the Colour Society of Australia. He is retired from teaching but remains active as a researcher, writer and educator, and has been a member of the Colour Literacy Project team from its launch in 2020.

Talk 2: Colors in Motion: Designing With Change

The Speaker:Marjan Kooroshnia