You'll have to excuse me if I rattle on a bit here. I tend to get a little too passionate about typefaces, logos, shapes, forms, and particularly colours. I can see a colour, and it will say so much to me that I'll almost be looking for the next project to use it in.


This got me thinking; so many artists and photographers come to Symi year after year, with their cameras and canvases under their arm...why? Is it the unique architecture that surrounds the harbour? The friendly locals with their warm hospitality? Local cuisine? The beautiful bays for swimming? All these things contribute, I think, but what is it that makes not only artists keep coming back, but also holiday maker...time and time again? What makes some of us choose Symi to be our home?


I think it's all to do with light and colour! Before you click one of the links above, to quickly make an escape from reading this, maybe you should just hear me out!


If you've ever studied painting, then you would've seen the 'Colour Wheel'. It's made up of 12 colours and is the artists' bible to mixing colour. The colour wheel introduces primary, secondary and tertiary colours as well as colour complements. The primary colours are red, blue and yellow, and cannot be created by mixing other elements. However, any two primary colours mixed together will yield a secondary colour - orange, green or purple. Tertiary colours are created by mixing a secondary colour with a primary colour. For example, yellow-green is made by mixing the secondary colour green with the primary colour, yellow.

One of the guides the colour wheel also provides is how colours will work together. Usually colours next to each other create harmony while adjacent ones create contrast. There are also all the variations based on light. This is the Hue value. Remove light and you get the darker tones, and adding it obviously gives lighter tones, but also creates transparency. Chroma is the intensity of saturation. For instance, the intensity of green can be reduced by adding red.

What has this got to do with Symi? I think Symi has its own colour palette, and I think it's unique. It works on both harmony and contrast colours, and because we have over 300 days of sunshine here, we see it in its full vibrant capacity. In the UK, for example, there is a lot less light than in Symi, and the colours move toward the centre. Strangely enough, the British don't help themselves either. They build concrete tower blocks in their cities which reflect very little of the light they have. They are now building so many glass structures, possibly in an attempt to utilise as much of the light as possible.


Santorini is one of the most beautiful islands in Greece. Its white houses and windmills match the picture we have in our heads of Greece. It is a wonderful place but does not reflect light and colour in the same way Symi does. In fact it's almost quite bland compared to Symi because it's reflecting light with light. You don't get anywhere near the tonal values.

Looking at the original colour wheel, I was immediately able to pick out two colours and their shades which are prominent on Symi. I then looked at the colours next to these for harmony. Using these colours, I created a second colour wheel where the variation between all of the colours formed the new tones. Once again, adding or taking away light gives the various tints.

This gave me a ‘base’ to work with. The next thing I did was take a collection of photographs from this website. They included harbour shots, village shots, beach shots and mountain shots. In order to create a true colour wheel, all these elements have to be included. I took the average (the ‘mean’) of the colours in each of the photos which gave me a collection of around 20- 25 standard colours. By adding these to the base colours that I took from the colour wheel, I’m able to create a new wheel.

And here it is. You'll notice a smaller influence of green, and a larger influence of red, orange, and blue. I would expect the colour wheel to be very different in the winter when the island has more growth. But no less striking.

You'll probably look at the wheel and wonder where the bright pinks, reds, and purples are. Well, by adding more light (Hue) and mixing a combination of these colours, it will produce those tones. The wheel takes into account the 'whole' of Symi. Not just splashes of bright colour. And that has to include the larger influences of mountains, sky, and sea.


I can even test the palette of colours. I stripped a harbour photo of all its own colour and then re-applied colour using only the new palette and its adjacent/opposite derivatives. The original picture is shown below on the left and uses 'millions' of colours. The 'forced' palette from the new colour wheel can be seen on the right. I'm sure you'll agree that they are very close, indicating that the palette seems to work.

You may be asking why I've done this...and I would answer that because of my job I simply find it intriguing. I should almost be able to take any combination of the colours in the new palette, place them together, and it would remind somebody of Symi in some way. Very useful for me, if I need to create a Symi-related design. But also I think the colour combination will not be repeated anywhere else in the world. I believe that subconsciously it's what makes us love Symi so much. We keep coming back because it gives us the greatest contrast from our existing environment, and the reason is light and these colours.