8 COLOR HARMONY In Search of Beauty / Intervals and Harmony / Hue and Harmony / Major and Minor Themes / Value and Harmony / Saturation and Harmony / Beyond Harmony: Dissonant Colors / The X-tra Factor: Surface and Harmony / Some Harmonious Conclusions
The enjoyment of colors, individually or in harmony, is experienced by the eye as an organ, and it communicates its pleasure to the rest of the man.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is a theory in design that people will respect and care for surroundings and objects that they find beautiful and will disdain and neglect, even damage, those that are unappealing. On some level, the pursuit of happiness always includes the pursuit of beauty.
In Search of Beauty
Beauty is the quality of an object or experience that gives pleasure to one or more of the senses. A color can be beautiful, or a sound, or a scent. Delight in the presence of beauty is as natural to the human condition as breathing.
Harmony is the happy condition that follows when two or more different things are sensed together as a single, pleasing experience. Things that are in harmony are perceived as complete, continuous, and natural. Harmony is intuitive; a feeling that things are just as they should be. In a harmonious situation everything is in balance; everything belongs. Happy families live in harmony; barbershop quartets sing in harmony; a hermit lives in harmony with nature. Harmonious experiences are without gaps or surprises.
Color harmony occurs when two ...
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