Color and Design

Course Description

Color and Design explores the conceptual and aesthetic use of colour photography, colour theory, sequence, narrative, design, page layout, and typography. Students develop images demonstrating understanding of colour's role in photographic meaning and impact, apply colour theory to both photography and post-production, and build a cohesive colour photograph series culminating in a professionally designed book using industry-standard software, with colour serving as the primary conceptual framework throughout.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, PGY is the Photography prefix. Daytona State publishes this at 2 credits with a $30 lab fee, offered fall, spring and summer, with PGY1800 as prerequisite, giving approximately 40 contact hours at the studio convention.

Two things make this course unusually valuable. First, it treats colour as meaning rather than as a setting — most photographers learn colour as a technical correction problem and never as a compositional and emotional tool. Second, it ends in a designed book, which forces the skills photographers most often lack: sequencing, editing a body of work, and presenting it in a designed object. A photo book is also a genuinely useful portfolio piece.

Daytona State does not publish a lecture and laboratory split for its PGY courses. The prefix runs at two distinct conventions: studio and production courses at approximately 20 contact hours per credit (PGY1100C, PGY1101, PGY1800C, PGY1802C, PGY2210C, PGY2470C, PGY2650, PGY2750C, PGY2801C and PGY2806C are all published at that rate), and survey and lecture courses at 15 (PGY2000 and PGY2270). This is a hands-on course and is priced at the studio convention.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe colour theory: hue, saturation, value, and their interactions.
• Describe additive and subtractive colour and their relevance to photography.
• Apply colour harmonies: complementary, analogous, triadic, and monochromatic.
• Describe colour temperature and its perceptual and emotional effects.
• Use colour to direct attention within a frame.
• Use colour to convey mood, meaning, and narrative.
• Describe cultural and contextual associations of colour.
• Photograph deliberately for colour relationships.
• Control colour at capture through light, gels, and white balance.
• Apply colour grading and colour adjustment in post-production.
• Maintain colour consistency across a body of work.
• Apply colour management: profiles, working spaces, and conversions.
• Calibrate a display and soft-proof for output.
• Prepare files correctly for print and for screen.
• Describe design principles: balance, hierarchy, rhythm, and white space.
• Apply typographic principles and select appropriate typefaces.
• Describe grid systems and apply them to page layout.
• Sequence a series of photographs to build meaning.
• Describe pacing, pairing, and the function of the spread.
• Edit a body of work critically and select for coherence.
• Design a photographic book using industry-standard software.
• Prepare a book for production, including bleed, margins, and output.
• Develop and sustain a coherent conceptual framework.
• Present and defend a body of work in critique.

Optional Outcomes

• Describe the history of colour photography and its key practitioners.
• Apply alternative and experimental colour processes.
• Describe photo book publishing and self-publishing options.
• Design an exhibition or alternative presentation of a series.
• Apply advanced retouching in support of a colour concept.
• Prepare a book dummy for submission or exhibition.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• Colour theory fundamentals
• Additive and subtractive colour
• Colour harmonies
• Colour temperature and perception
• Colour and attention
• Colour, mood, and narrative
• Cultural associations of colour
• Photographing for colour
• Controlling colour at capture
• Colour grading in post-production
• Consistency across a body of work
• Colour management and profiles
• Calibration and soft-proofing
• Preparing files for print and screen
• Design principles
• Typography
• Grid systems and layout
• Sequencing a series
• Pacing, pairing, and the spread
• Critical editing
• Book design
• Preparing a book for production
• Conceptual framework
• Critique and defence

Optional Topics

• History of colour photography
• Alternative and experimental processes
• Photo book publishing
• Exhibition design
• Advanced retouching for colour
• Book dummy preparation

Resources & Tools

• The programme's studio, lighting kit, and print lab — by far the most valuable resource here, and the reason to take these courses in person. Book open lab time and use all of it.
• American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) (asmp.org) — named in this programme's own course description; business practice, contracts, and pricing guidance, with inexpensive student membership.
• U.S. Copyright Office (copyright.gov) — free; group registration for photographs, and the authority for anything in this guide about copyright.
• Professional Photographers of America (PPA) (ppa.org) — certification, business resources, and equipment insurance.
• Light: Science and Magic (Hunter, Biver & Fuqua) — the book on lighting; it explains why light behaves as it does rather than giving recipes.
• The Photographer's Playbook and On Photography (Sontag) — for the conceptual and critical side.
• Real World Color Management (Fraser, Murphy & Bunting) — the colour reference.
• Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop, or Capture One — the industry-standard catalog and editing tools.
• A calibration device — borrow the programme's if you can; editing on an uncalibrated monitor wastes the work.
• FAA Part 107 study materials (faa.gov) — free, and the certificate is directly marketable.
• Blank model and property releases — ASMP publishes usable templates; keep paper in the bag and an app on the phone.
• Interaction of Color (Albers) — the foundational text on how colours behave against one another; short, and it changes how you see.
• The Photobook: A History (Parr & Badger) — for understanding what a photo book can be.
• Adobe InDesign — the industry-standard layout tool, and the one to learn for this.
• Look at actual photo books. The library is the best resource for this course — sequencing cannot be learned from screens.

Career Pathways

• Photographer — SOC 27-4021; the majority of working photographers are self-employed, which makes the business content in this programme central rather than peripheral.
• Commercial and advertising photography — product, food, architecture, and campaign work; the best-paid segment.
• Portrait and wedding photography — the largest self-employed segment, and a real Florida market given the destination-wedding trade.
• Photo assistant and digital technician — the standard entry route, and how most commercial photographers actually start.
• Retoucher and post-production specialist — a distinct, well-paid, and remote-friendly speciality.
• Photojournalism and editorial — a contracting field, but the skills transfer widely.
• Corporate, marketing, and in-house content roles — where a growing share of steady salaried photography work is.
• Multimedia and video production — still photographers who can also shoot and edit video are markedly more employable, which is what PGY1850 and PGY2750C exist for.
• Real estate and architectural photography — steady Florida demand, and drone work is frequently expected.
• Theme park, attractions, and event photography — a distinctively Central Florida employer.
• Stock and licensing — a supplementary income stream rather than a career on its own.
• Fine art practice, galleries, and teaching — normally combined with commercial work.
• Transfer to a bachelor's in photography, digital media, or fine art — ⚠ confirm which studio courses transfer as major credit, since technical production credit does not always.

Special Information

⚠ Sequencing is a skill, and it is what most photographers never learn

• A series is not a folder of good pictures. Order changes meaning — the same photograph reads differently depending on what precedes it, and that is the entire craft here.
• Print small and lay them out physically. Moving prints on a table teaches sequencing in a way that scrolling a screen genuinely does not.
• Consider the spread, not the page. In a book, two images are seen together, and the relationship between them is a compositional decision.
• Vary the pace. Full-bleed images, white space, and rests give the reader somewhere to breathe, and a book at a constant intensity becomes monotonous.
• The opening and closing images carry disproportionate weight. Choose them last, once you know what the book is about.
• Cut your favourite image if it does not serve the sequence. This is the hardest editing skill and the most necessary one.
• Let the concept lead. A book about colour should be legible as such without a statement explaining it.
• Design serves the photographs. Restrained typography, generous margins, and a consistent grid — decorative design competes with the images and loses.

⚠ Colour management is where books and prints go wrong

• Calibrate the monitor before you begin. Editing colour on an uncalibrated display means you do not know what you made, and the printed book will tell you so expensively.
• Work in a defined colour space and know when conversions happen — a wide space for editing, sRGB for screen, the printer's profile for output.
• Soft-proof before committing to print. Paper and ink have a smaller gamut than a display, and saturated blues and greens are the usual casualties.
• Get a test print or a proof before ordering a full book run.
• Ask the printer for their profile and requirements, and follow them exactly — bleed, margins, resolution, and colour space.
• Judge prints under consistent light. A print assessed under warm domestic light and under daylight looks like two different prints.
• Keep the master files unflattened so the book can be revised or reprinted.

⚠ File and colour discipline — unglamorous, and it is what separates professionals

• Shoot raw and keep the raw files. They are the negative, and every future re-edit depends on them.
• Follow 3-2-1: three copies, two kinds of media, one off-site. A second folder on the same drive is not a backup, and drives fail without warning.
• Verify the copy before formatting a card — file count, total size, and a spot-check of playback.
• Name files and folders systematically from day one — date, client or project, and sequence. Renaming later breaks the link between your catalog and your files, which is a painful, self-inflicted, and entirely avoidable failure.
• Add metadata at import — copyright notice, contact details, and keywords. It travels with the file and it is what lets someone find you when the image escapes.
• Calibrate the monitor. Editing on an uncalibrated screen means you do not know what you made, and the print or the client's screen will tell you so.
• Work in a defined colour space and know when to convert. A wide working space for editing, sRGB for the web, and the printer's profile for print — conversions at the wrong point are where colour goes wrong.
• Soft-proof before printing, and expect print and screen to differ; the paper and the ink set have a smaller gamut than the display.
• Keep an archive you can still open in ten years, and migrate it as media formats age.

⚠⚠ Copyright is the photographer's actual asset — and registration is what gives it teeth

• You own the copyright in a photograph from the moment you make it, automatically, without registering anything. That is the default and it is in your favour.
• ⚠⚠ But registering with the U.S. Copyright Office before an infringement occurs is what unlocks statutory damages and attorney's fees. Without timely registration you are generally limited to actual damages, which for a single image are often too small to make a lawyer worth hiring — which in practice means the infringement goes unremedied. This is the single most consequential business fact in professional photography and most photographers learn it too late.
• Register in batches, on a schedule. Group registration of published or unpublished photographs makes this affordable and routine rather than per-image.
• "Work made for hire" transfers ownership to the hiring party, and it applies to employees automatically and to commissioned work only where a signed agreement says so for qualifying categories. Read every contract for a work-for-hire or full-assignment clause — signing one gives away the asset permanently.
• You license usage; you do not sell photographs. The licence defines media, territory, duration, and exclusivity, and pricing follows usage — the same image is worth vastly different amounts for a local flyer and a national campaign.
• Put the licence in writing, every time, including for friends and for small jobs. Undefined scope becomes unlimited scope in a dispute.
• Copyright is separate from ownership of the print or the file, and clients routinely assume otherwise. Say it explicitly.
• Credit is not payment, and "exposure" is not a licence fee.
• ⚠ Rule 11 applies. Copyright law, fee schedules, and registration procedures change — verify at copyright.gov and take legal advice on anything consequential rather than relying on a course guide.

⚠⚠ Model and property releases — what they cover and when you need one

• A release protects against right-of-publicity and privacy claims, not copyright ones. They are different problems and photographers conflate them constantly.
• Commercial use of a recognisable person generally requires a signed model release. Advertising, promotion, packaging, and stock all count.
• Editorial and journalistic use generally does not require one, which is why the same photograph can run in a news story without a release and cannot appear in an advertisement without one. Know which use you are licensing.
• Minors require a parent or guardian's signature, without exception.
• Property releases matter for recognisable private property, and for identifiable pets, artwork, and distinctive architecture in commercial use.
• Carry blank releases always — paper in the bag and an app on the phone. The shot you did not plan is the one that needs one.
• Get the release at the time. Tracking someone down months later, when a client wants the image, frequently fails.
• Keep releases filed with the images and named so they can be found. A release you cannot produce is a release you do not have.
• Location permission is separate from people permission — private property needs the owner's consent, and many public spaces require a permit for a tripod, lighting, or a crew.
• Clear the background too — artwork, logos, and signage in a commercial frame are somebody's property.

⚠ The portfolio is the credential, not the transcript

• Photography hires on work. Nobody asks for a transcript; they ask to see the book or the site, and they decide in under a minute.
• Edit ruthlessly. A portfolio is judged by its weakest image, not its best — twelve strong photographs beat thirty good ones, and the thirty actively hurt.
• Show the work you want to be hired for. A book full of landscapes will not get you commercial portrait work, however good the landscapes are.
• Coherence signals intent. A body of work with a clear point of view reads as a photographer; a sampler reads as a student.
• Treat every course project as a portfolio candidate, which means clearing releases and permissions at the time, not the week you apply for work.
• Get critique from people who will be honest, and separate the work from yourself when you hear it.
• Keep it current. A site last updated two years ago says something you do not want said.
• Assist working photographers. This is how the profession is actually entered — you learn the business, the pace, and the client relationship, and assisting leads to referrals more reliably than anything else.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

The first digit of an SCNS number denotes the year of offering, not transferability. Courses at the 1000 and 2000 levels transfer transparently between Florida public institutions, and 3000 to 4000 is unproblematic since both are upper division. The boundary that actually matters is 2000 to 3000, where lower-division credit generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement.

⚠ In this prefix the number does not indicate sequence. PGY2107 carries PGY2210 as a prerequisite — a course with a higher number. Sequence by the prerequisite chain, never by the numeric order.

PGY2116 is 2 credits and approximately 40 contact hours with a $30 lab fee, offered fall, spring and summer at Daytona State, prerequisite PGY1800.

⚠ It is a corequisite of PGY1209, which is itself corequisite with PGY1850 — the three are designed to be taken together. The deliverable is a designed book, which is a strong portfolio object; keep it.