Igor Asselbergs — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:03 GMT

Great piece. I love the analysis of M versus P channels.

But I would add a ‘third dimension’. This is illustrated in figure 1: the red icon on the right is clear to see. But not because of either the M or P channel. It’s clear to see because it’s red and the other icons aren’t. Color is a great way to ‘lead’ the eye even before the M or P channels kick in.
I myself recently designed some icons for a image editor. In the design, the selecting tools are distiguished from other tools by giving them a green overall cast. They are easy to distinghuish because their color is different, not because of their shape or details. Colors work primarily in the overall view of the whole design. You can’t attribute it’s effect to a single icon only.

Igor Asselbergs — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:08 GMT

Just a few points on colour blindness to get the facts straight:
Hardly anyone is really colour blind. Some people have a deficiency in their visual perception. But that’s it.
This means colour is a usefull medium to get information across, even for the colour blind. There are some plugins for photoshop out there that can alter an image to match the perception of several types of colour blindness. But taking the statistics into account, you’ll only have to deal with deutans and protans anyway.
See: http://www.colorjinn.com/en/6oncolour/grey/2/2.html

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Igor Asselbergs