Color for Creatives by The Futur

The Futur Color for Creatives is a project-based online course taught by Greg Gunn, an illustrator, animator and creative director based in Los Angeles. It explains how colour works, how the colour wheel and colour harmonies help you make choices, how to build a palette from scratch and how to use colour with typography. You get more than three hours of video lectures, over five hours of bonus webinars, a Color Guidebook and a Color Glossary as PDFs, and project files. It suits beginner to intermediate creatives and costs $149.

Colour is often the first thing people notice in a design and the last thing designers feel confident about. Many rely on palette generators without understanding why a combination works. This course aims to give you reasons, not just recipes, so you can defend your choices to clients and adapt them across print, screen and motion. Because Greg Gunn works across illustration and animation, the examples speak to more than one discipline.

What You Will Learn

The course covers the practical colour knowledge most creatives need day to day:

• How colour works and how we perceive it
• Reading the colour wheel and using it to plan schemes
• Classic colour harmonies and when to use each one
• Building a palette from scratch for a project
• Adjusting colours so they work together rather than compete
• Using colour with typography for legibility and emphasis
• Applying everything in a hands-on project with the supplied files

Who Is The Futur Color for Creatives For?

The official page names graphic designers, illustrators, web designers and motion designers, and the content reflects that range. It is a good fit if you can already use design software but feel unsure when choosing or adjusting colours, or if you want a shared vocabulary for talking about colour with clients and colleagues.

It is not a painting course about mixing physical pigments, and it does not cover technical colour management for print production in depth. Advanced colourists may find the theory familiar, though the bonus webinars add extra material.

Course Structure

The official page lists the topics rather than numbered modules. The course moves through:

• How colour works: the basics of colour and perception
• The colour wheel and harmonies: structured ways to combine colours
• Building palettes: creating a palette from scratch for a project
• Colour for typography: making type readable and expressive with colour
• Bonus webinars: more than five hours of extra sessions

The course is project-based, so you apply each topic as you go using the provided project files, with the Guidebook and Glossary as reference.

Price and Access

The Futur Color for Creatives costs $149 as a one-time purchase. The official page we checked did not state the access period, so confirm the terms and the current price on the official page before buying.

About the Instructor

Greg Gunn is an illustrator, animator and creative director working in Los Angeles. He also teaches The Futur's Illustration for Designers course, so his teaching style will be familiar if you have taken that one.

Things to Consider

• Software: basic Photoshop or Illustrator skills are expected for the project work.
• Time: budget for the full eight-plus hours if you plan to watch the bonus webinars as well as the main lectures.
• Reference material: keep the Color Guidebook and Glossary to hand; they are useful long after the course ends.
• Practice: rebuild the palette of an old project using what you learn, and compare the two versions.
• Pairing: Illustration for Designers, also taught by Greg Gunn, puts colour to work in a full illustration project; Stylescapes by Chris Do shows how colour fits into presenting a visual direction.
• Feedback: share your palettes with peers to test whether they work for others.

How to Get the Most From It

Collect a small library of images you love before starting, from posters to film stills. As each lesson introduces a concept, return to your library and identify it there. Learning to read colour in existing work is the fastest way to build an eye, and it makes the palette-building lessons far easier.

Start the Course

Interested in learning with The Futur?

Start Color for Creatives

For the full syllabus and pricing, visit the official The Futur website.

Looking for more ways to learn? Browse all courses and learning resources on Good Stuff Weekly.

Last verified: November 9, 2026