Colour Scheme & Composition

Colour Scheme 

&

Matthieu Lavanchy recreating food emojis.

  

On 'It's Nice That' I came across Matthieu Lavanchys work and found it relevant with my work with emojis.  

The Gourmand is a biannual food and culture journal featuring 120 pages of “specially commissioned content – not to be found elsewhere, in either sentiment or execution". The publication, founded in 2011 by David Lane and Marina Tweed, has become well known for its witty and inventive representation of the world of food.

The shoot is deceptively simple featuring single colour backgrounds and one “emoji” per shot. The replication of everything from the lighting to the angle the “emoji” sits at, creates such a likeness that the images almost become an optical illusion.

It was intresting to observe how different background colours made different food pop. When developing my App it was difficult to decided what colour scheme to use. As using some colours with some emojis would risk them being lost due to little contrast. 

An initial idea was to categorise the food into Meat, Fruit & Veg, Carbohydrates and Dairy. Each would have a different colour. In order for this to work with the emojis, putting them in an isolated white circle would prevent their presentation on the App being affected by different coloured backgrounds. 

After designing this it was then noticed that the App would not appear as so when actually in use. As It might only show vegetables nearby on some occasions - disrupting the sequence of these colour combinations. In reality the App would appear less perfect, and more like shown bellow. 

Another Colour Scheme tried was having it only Green and White to give a really clean look. With the it being a food app based on creating a sustainable world it was important .

From feedback this design was too empty. Having the emojis in a white circle on a white background didn't make the design pop enough. Therefore the colours were reversed by making the background colour green but keeping the circles white to bring attention to the emojis. 

Composition 

Through moving the emoji to the side and having the name of the food centred alone, both the text and image had more space along each section. This abled both to be enlarged. Having a bigger emoji and bigger text gave the app more impact and really jumps out at the user of what's on offer. 

With emojis most commonly used on a smaller scale, having them larger makes it more fun and breaks up the otherwise larger ratio of text to image. 

Having the text centered as displayed above, leaves more room from text and extra information to sit below or above it. Having this extra information regarding the food e.g. cheese - mozzarella 1 pack or chicken - 2 breasts free range was important as it could easily change users from wanting to pick it up or not. Therefore the new composition allowed this.