
When gray (black + white) is added to a pure color, you create a tone.

These darken and dull the brightness of pure colors, and range from slightly darker to almost black. When black is added to a pure color, you create a shade. Tints range from slightly whiter to almost-white. They are lighter and paler than a pure color, and not as intense. Some people refer to these as pastel colors. When white is added to a pure color, you get a tint. These are the colors of children's toys, daycare decor, and summer clothes. They are intense, bright, cheery, and untainted colors. Pure Color Primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, without the addition of white, black, or a third color, are pure (or saturated) colors. It ends up being closer to the primary color. They are created by adding more of one primary color than the other creating not a true secondary color. They are the "two-name" colors, such as red-purple, red-orange, yellow-green, etc. Tertiary colors take secondary colors one step further. If you look on the color wheel, you'll find the secondary colors in between two primary colors. They are created using the primary colors. Secondary colors are purple, green, and orange. However, there are exceptions in cases like light (where they’re cyan, magenta, and yellow), the print industry’s CMYK, and the RGB model used in screens and monitors. In most cases, they’re red, blue, and yellow. Primary colors are the core ingredients other colors are made from by mixing them together in different amounts.


Anyone in marketing should understand the basics of color theory because no matter what, you are using color in your content. Understanding how color works isn't just for artists dipping their hands into paint and pigments all day long.
