I don’t remember the last time I did proper homework but earlier this week I knuckled down and completed the preparatory exercises for my one-day NCS colour course with Marilyn Sturgeon tomorrow Friday. The work involved reading through their online training, Introduction to Colour Specification. A number of the themes included in the section I had become familiar with through my MA work, there was even a whole page devoted to the problems of describing and communicating colour, which NCS was developed precisely to avoid. However, I did pick up a number of things, including references to some interesting projects using NCS, which I may blog about in more detail after the course. The online training isn’t massively detailed but is definitely worth a look as it touches on several of different aspects of colour and gives a good overview of how the NCS works and how it can be used. There is also a good glossary of colour terms on the site, which is always useful and two other online courses: Colour Contrast for Part M and Colour Management for Brands and Products.
I also had great fun with the hands on task I received in the post last Friday, which involved arranging coloured squares around the NCS colour wheel, in bands of whiteness, maximum saturation and blackness. I am hoping I have done it correctly, under energy-saving light bulbs it’s not as easy as it looks, especially as there seems to be a dominance of green, with quite subtle shifts in the hue, when compared with the shift from red to blue. Of course I will find out about all of this tomorrow, when I hope to be having lots more fun with coloured squares.
Colourful Language 