Color brings an enlivening element to visuals.

Remember what a breakthrough color photographs and color TVs

were?
Oh, wait.
I'm dating myself again.
Trust me.
They were both revolutionary for their time.
Color greatly enhances the message of the visual.
With it, you can create emotional moods,
focus attention, or add emphasis.
To use it effectively, it helps to understand how color works.
We start with the three primary colors, red, blue, and yellow.
These three colors cannot be formed using any combination
of other colors.
All other colors are derived from these three.
By mixing them together, we can make the secondary colors
of green, orange, and purple.
And by mixing the primary and the secondary colors,
we formed what are called tertiary colors, yellow-orange,
red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green,
and yellow-green.
To show the relationships between these colors,
we use a color wheel.
Effective visuals use colors that are harmonious.
And the color wheel helps us understand which color
combination creates harmony.
Color harmony refers to the agreeable effect
of two or more colors used together,
as opposed to disharmony of color.
According to Susan Barnes in her book Introduction to Visual
Communication: From Cave Art to Second Life,
color harmony or discord can be very subjective.
But Johannes Itten argued that objective color harmony
principle should be established.
So using quantitative data, he said this
about the harmony of colors.
"All complementary pairs, all triads
whose color form equilateral or isosceles triangles
in the 12-member color wheel, and all tetrads forming squares
or rectangles are harmonious."
Here's a visual of the standard 12-member color wheel.
We can use a color wheel to help us create harmonious color
schemes.
Color schemes are colors that work well together.
Let's look at three types of harmonic color schemes
using the 12-member color wheel.
They are called complementary color schemes, dyadic color
schemes, or analogous color schemes.
Complementary colors are two colors directly opposite one
another on the color wheel.
Though harmonious, these color combinations
show sharp contrast and can be used
to grab the viewer's attention.
For example, red and green are directly
opposite on the color wheel, so they are complementary colors.
Dyadic colors are two colors separated
by one color on the color wheel.
For example, red and light orange are dyadic colors.
They are separated by dark orange.
Analogous colors are three colors right
next to one another on the color wheel.
For example, lime green, light yellow, and light orange
are analogous colors.
With this knowledge of color, you're
now equipped to incorporate meaningful colors
into your visuals.
You should pick harmonious color schemes, not random colors
that you like.
You can pick more subtle schemes for subtle points
and more drastic schemes to draw attention to information.
And when giving a presentation, all of your visuals
should stay within a harmonious color scheme.

Our last basic element is texture.

According to Oxford's online dictionary,
texture is the feel, appearance, or consistency
of a surface or a substance.
We can understand that in the world
of three-dimensional objects.
I can feel the texture of my shirt or my hair.
But what about a visual?
Whether it's on a piece of paper or digitally rendered,
how can we create texture?
Take a look at these different textures.
Notice how lines and shapes, shadows and contrast all
work together to give the appearance of texture
in the picture.
We can create the illusion of texture
by using the visual components we've talked about,
points, lines, and shapes.
In her book Visual Alchemy: The Fine Art of Digital Montage,
Catherine McIntyre says this of texture and visual composition.
"Texture brings immediacy, a direct physical connection
to an image.
When it is made entirely within a program,
digital art can sometimes look too clean,
artificial, and lacking in character.
It needs real texture to breathe life into it."
Most 3D modeling software offers robust functionality
for creating textures on models.
However, if you have this type of software
or are not familiar with it, you can still create texture.
Portrait artists are particularly
talented at creating the illusion of texture
on a flat surface.
Consider these drawings, and study how the designer created
texture with lines.

So now you know about five really important elements

used in professional visual composition.
You may be thinking, how will this help me
when I'm developing visuals?
Well, let's think about it for a minute.
Let's imagine that you're on a research and design
team that's worked through an idea for a brand new product.
To make a working prototype for a proof of concept,
your team needs money.
And your boss has asked you to make
a presentation in which you will describe a product
and ask for $350,000.
Look, the more realistic you can make your visual images,
the easier it is for your audience--
the people who must give you the money--
to understand your concept.
We talked earlier about how we can all
tell when a visual looks good.
And when it does, we remember it.
We like it.
We focus on it more.
Isn't that what you want people to do
with the visuals in your presentation?
So remember, start with the basics--
points, lines, shapes, colors, and texture.