Today, in an effort to spread awareness and a better understanding of COLOURlovers, including practical ways to apply the tools and community knowledge on the site, we're highlighting the COLOURlovers group t3achers and the Forum Topic: Using COLOURLovers in the Classroom, where one member of this group, speakin_colors, shared her blog post (reposted below) with some ways she engages her students using COLOURlovers. Her ideas are shared by some like Klip who said, "I use COLOURlovers in my teaching all the time - mostly to get my (university aged new media design) students sensitised to colour combinations. Seeing how seriously many of the users of this forum take colours and colour combinations is usually a surprise to my students, and helps them to get used to the idea of spending time just playing with colour." While others suggested that it could be used for more technical training, that COLOURlovers  "could be useful for introducing them (to) RGB/HSV color schemes."

How to Use Colors & Palettes from COLOURlovers

Using Patterns in the Classroom

Students can be given patterns to colour. By teaching students the meaning of colours and how to use colour not at random but creatively, patterns can acquire powerful meaningful connotations.

This is a guest post written by Howard Sullivan who together with Tom Phillipson make up the London based design agency Your Studio. You can see the original post on their blog.

“Underneath Day’s azure eyes, Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite’s destined halls.”

As the sun rose and the art-crowds flocked, the great palazzos threw open their doors this weekend marking the opening of Venice’s 53rd Biennale, curated by Daniel Burnbaum and open

Francis Upritchard’s ‘Yellow Dancer’ from ‘Save Yourself’, installation for the NZ Pavillion, Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Venice Biennale, 2009

For the next four summer months. This showcase of the world’s best and most diverse art talent is the modern treasure within not only the amazing crumling palazzos but also at the ‘Arsenale’, a grand industrial L-shaped sequence of double-height brick warehouses and at ‘Giardini’- a large open park scattered with rambling pavilions and outbuildings.

We first encountered Francis Upritchard at Kate MacGarry’s Vyner Street Gallery for the show ‘Feierabend‘ with Martino Gamper and Karl Fritsch.  ‘Save Yourself‘, Upritchard’s show representing New Zealand at the Biennale at Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana is both entrancing and unmissable.

Francis Upritchard’s ‘Save Yourself’ for the NZ Pavillion, Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana, Venice Biennale, 2009