Since the computer became one of the fundamental facilities, the boundary of design has been enlarged from physical products to virtual ones which are presented in digital media. The terms of multimedia, VR and computer animation become familiar and the digital economy is briskly increased due to the pervasion of network. Designers who are engaged in this new industry are required to possess the abilities of controlling digital color effectively and to understand it's characteristics.
The traditional color education based on analog environment, however, is not sufficient to teach the whole characteristics of color represented on digital media. Especially in multimedia design, new elements of representation including interactivity and time should be involved dealing digital media.
The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics of digital color, to reveal the needs of digital color education and to investigate the contents and methods of digital color education. From the literature review the definition and characteristics of digital color are identified. From the analysis of questionaries, the needs for digital color education was identified as an expansion of traditional color education. Both product designers and multimedia designers use computer a lot on their color design works. From the literature review and the questionaries for digital design, the guidelines of digital color education are identified. The digital color education requires new contents and teaching methods based on the characteristics of digital media. One of the desirable solution can be CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction). As an expansion of traditional color education, CAI provides an individual learning environment with a computer. The newly developed CAI program is composed of 4 learning divisions : digital color concept and characteristics, color spaces used in digital environments, color contrasts, and color harmony on digital media.
