Rethinking colour in design education through the human and social perspectives

Abstract

The issues of colour education concerning the lack of consideration of this subject in creative and project disciplines' curricula have been documented by several scholars during the last 30 years. In the case of design, apart from the fact that colour is not taught or is taught very little, one of the main problems is that the few courses that teach this subject are structured almost exclusively based on colour theory and do not consider the application of colour to real and current design problems. One of the consequences of this is a lack of a culture of colour in design; the scarcity of training instances related to it in terms of specialised courses at the university level contributes to the lack of qualified professionals who know how to tackle colour design with the necessary skills. This article proposes to improve the teaching of colour for the design of the 21st century from a different approach: from content-centred education to human-centred learning. Six directions for colour design education are proposed and exemplified by placing the human being and the social perspective –the growing dissemination of ethical and social concerns – at the centre of the focus, a path that the design discipline has taken in recent years.