Experiments on the Interaction of Color and Form

The author believes that color can be combined with form in design to serve as an attribute of an object’s perceived 3-dimensionality. This idea was pursued and supported by experiments performed by her with her students of design and architecture with a 3-dimensional object constructed of seven square panels that were assembled to resemble three cubes joined together in a particular arrangement. The panels were colored in different ways to determine how colors can (1) enhance the perception of convex cubes, (2) cause cubes to produce alternating illusions of concavity and convexity and (3) cause one of the cubes to appear convex and another to appear flattened. She believes that advantage can be taken of the color attribute of form in environmental design.

A visual principle that has emerged from these studies is that ambiguity in the monocular perception of 3-dimensionality may occur when a boundary between two adjacent colors appears more pronounced than a physical boundary, possibly a significant aspect of camouflage.