Peer Review Three: Maddy West

Color Theory Diagram Created by Maddy West, 2020

The individual whose Color Theory Diagram I have chosen to review is Maddy West. Maddy took a unique approach to this assignment. I appreciate the arrangement of the colors she has used in her diagram to represent the form of a tree. Thinking about the relationship between the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors she has used in her diagram, Maddy has presented them in a way that at first glance, I wouldn't initially pick up on any reasoning behind the placements of each color. After further inspection, it is clearer to me that Maddy has arranged these colors in a way that mimics the cyclical structure of the typical color wheel, starting at one point of the tree and moving clockwise (or counterclockwise) to show the progression from one color to the next.

I really like how Maddy has chosen to make the photographs she has taken the largest "bubble" within one color section of the tree. I'm sure this was not Maddy's intention, but I think this decision really conveys to the viewer that all of these fully saturated colors can be found in nature or in real life, which ultimately ties back to the underlying nature theme that is represented within her design. Maddy represents the concepts of saturation, color temperature, and contrasting hues in a couple different ways. Maddy has created a legend that applies to the color sections within her tree that breaks down which bubble is representative of which color concept. For temperature and saturation, Maddy has chosen to pull these colors away from the diagram itself to separately call out and explain these concept to the viewer. I think the typography that Maddy has chosen to incorporate into her design is effective, but I would have maybe liked to see the names of the colors pulled away from the center of the photos so the viewer has more of an uninterrupted idea of what the images are. She could have possibly done a text wrap to follow the shape of the circle to make the linear text feel a little more integrated into the otherwise curvilinear design of her diagram.

In terms of improvements, like I had mentioned previously, I think Maddy could reimagine how she has incorporated typography into her design to make it more integrated into the curvilinear nature of her diagram. I think Maddy's strengths within her diagram are her unique idea behind the design, her integration of the color concepts with the corresponding legend to inform the viewer of the content within the diagram itself, as well as her decision to make her photographs a priority within her design.

Check out Maddy's original blog post here!