Project: Colour Palettes film

Self-published

Date: April 2004

Designer: James Goggin

Adobe Photoshop's colour palettes are an everyday tool for many photographers and designers, but their functionality belies an inherent beauty: millions of colours shifting and merging with the movement of a mouse. Use the ‘Only Web Colors’ option and the seemingly infinite colour spectrum is limited to 256 colours, where all the colour systems (HSB, RGB, LAB) are divided with odd lines determined by colour position.

The ‘Colour Palettes’ film is composed of screen-shots taken from every single step in each of the aforementioned colour palettes, from red through yellow, green, blue, purple, magenta and back to red. With both the context and function removed, all that remains are an animated set of random, almost illusionary coloured test patterns.

‘Colour Palettes’ was first shown in ‘The Free Library’ group show at Riviera in NYC, April -- May 2004. It was also shown in London during September/October 2004 as part of the ‘Interact1’ exhibition at London College of Communication.

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