hola,
I am following this reference templates discussion because I'm interested in the pd documentation project. I have only some side comments about colors, I think -if used, colors should be kept to accentuate content. This was said before but also in my view pd objects in reference patches should not be colored. I do think that colors help to remember things so it would be helpful to use them in order to remember families of objects or other categories. I did some exercise using colors to emphasize sections, making minor changes to template 9 from Ben - In order to have some constraint to choose I used a color palette -I borrowed filterbank~ colors for this.
http://ljudmila.org/~pueblo/box/constructivism/template9_a.png
previous try: http://ljudmila.org/~pueblo/box/constructivism/template7_aaa.png http://ljudmila.org/~pueblo/box/constructivism/color_palette.png
It is only an exercise I just wanted to note that the decision of using colors is sensitive, we associate many things to them and this becomes important when you are learning. I specially have problems with the use of gray which I associate with the obvious gray skies, pigeons and dictatorship (chilean style)
I'm not a graphic designer but I sense some relation between pd and constructivism/suprematism so this could also be an inspiration for color and form...
http://ljudmila.org/~pueblo/box/constructivism/malevich-st-1916.jpg http://ljudmila.org/~pueblo/box/constructivism/lissitzky-mayakovsky.jpg http://ljudmila.org/~pueblo/box/constructivism/rodchenko-mayak-nipple.jpg http://www.poster.net/malevich-kasimir/malevich-kasimir-black-rectangle-blue...
thanks for the good work and hope to join you in the chat discussion in some hours from now.
best wishes, alejandra