The visual communication impacts of Itten's color contrasts investigated and empirically tested as basic principles for use in art and design.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the visual communication impacts of Johannes Itten's widely disseminated color contrasts in the fields of art and design. Johannes Itten (1888–1967), former professor at Weimer Bauhaus, has made an unquestionable contribution to art and design with his color concepts, nonetheless, when reading his book, it is notable the lack of scientific and academic research underlying the concepts. Checking the visual communication impacts of Itten's seven color contrasts, specifically, is appropriate in a sense that these, with respective scientific background, may represent important basic color principles. In order to find foundation for the color contrasts, bibliography on perception and neuroscience was investigated. It was intended to distinguish color principles that tend to be common to all human beings, due to the nature and physiology of the human brain and eye, from other color principles which are not naturally common to all. An empirical study was conducted with a printed questionnaire as an analytical instrument. This questionnaire was developed in order to evaluate the subjects' perception on the visual communication impacts of each of Itten's color contrasts. This questionnaire was applied to 300 subjects, classified into different categories: age, gender, color blindness, and professional area. Analysis of these questionnaires comparing the subjects' categories offers inputs for the conclusion that the visual communication impacts tested using Itten's color contrasts are independent of age, gender, or professional area, thus tend to be considered as basic color principles for art and design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]