Do you ever struggle to find those elusive perfect colors for a graphic design project? What do you do?
There are many color theming sites out there, like Adobe Kuler and Colour Lovers, but not all of the themes people put together actually work with a real project and there are a lot to dig through.
Are there any “old reliable” color themes you always go back to?
I have this collection of colors that I usually fall back on if I can’t think of anything.
I’ll pick anywhere from three to seven of the colors to work with from the above palette. They all go really well together. I used this to pick colors for my portfolio site.
I also really like the Chili’s menu, particularly the photos of the drinks from their specialty menu. They are so vibrant!
As much as I think the term “Web 2.0” is silly, I do like the style, so long as it’s not over the top (*ducks*). I find it handy to have a color scheme to go with this style, because many of the looks are bright, techy and cheerful.
Check out these palettes that have been put together for you: 2006 colors, 2007 colors, generic popular 2.0 website colors.
These are a couple of other themes I’ve used in my last few projects that I really like
I like using a red, blue and green and then picking a “pop” color, for those items that need to stand out; usually that’s a yellow or orange.
How do you find or develop a color scheme for your projects? Do you sample colors from a photo? Do you visit those color theme sites? Do you use a color wheel or a color chart?
Technorati Tags: Design, Graphic Design, Color, Color Palette
This is a really cool article. I usually fly by the seat of my pants when I’m generating a color scheme, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I never really thought about being more methodical about my choices. Love the idea of selecting a red, green, and blue, and then a pop color.
Alec,
Yeah, I run into schemes sometimes not working too. Thats when I try to be a little more purposeful in choosing my colors. I am not always so particular about picking a color palette, but for longer projects (multiple pages or volumes or a series) I like to in order to unify them and make them look like they belong together. It’s probably not quite so important for one off ads and such. Have you ever used those color scheming sites to help you?
I use Colour Lovers once in a while. Actually, Esben and I are using Colour Lovers palettes for designing type samples on the iLT wiki, so I guess I’ve been using their site more than once in a while, lately.
Alec,
Oh very cool! Can you share which palette(s) you are using? Do you think they work well? Did you pick them or did Esben?
We’re both picking them — a different pallette for each face, actually. It’s fun!
Quite funny.. i stumbled upon this through two other blog articles and suddenly I found my name in the comment section :-p
When I have to find colors, which is one of my greatest challenges in design, I use VisiBone 2 as a startout, mostly because it has alot of grouped colorswatches in place.
Otherwise I use ColorLovers if I know what kind of grouped colors i need.. sometimes i just search with something like: kitchen, sink or whatever i might find as a interesting keyword.
But color in generel is very difficult to get around and I would love if there’s anyone who has a link to a swatch palette that’s quite extensive.
Esben,
I haven’t heard of VisiBone 2. Did I get the link right? It’s a downloadable Photoshop swatch palette? (For other readers, there are swatches available for many graphics programs, including GIMP, Illustrator and the Macromedia equivalents).
Hehe, so was a strange or delightful feeling to find that we are talking about you?
I have never thought to search through the color collections with keywords like that, Esben. Good idea! I have been collecting some more palettes recently, which I’ll share in an upcoming post. Stay tuned!
Well in Illustrator VisiBone 2 is a standard palette. I seriously don’t know about PS, since I never use image editing software. (update: if you replace the standard palette in PS, to VisiBone 2 you can see it).
Just a quick note here: Illustrator doesn’t have nearly as many swatches as PS, which is quite annoying actually.
The only reason I use it, is because there’s alot more swatches to choose between, instead of the basic palette
Esben,
I guess that shows you how much I use Illustrator *blush* I find dealing with color in Illustrator in general to be annoying, because it’s so different than Photoshop, which is what I’m the most familiar with. But that’s getting a little off topic! Thanks for another color resource, Esben!
Well sorry for going off topic.. its just the tool I use on a daily basis.
But when I choose colors I allways use ColorLovers, because adobe riped it off to creative kuler, which I find very flawed.
But keyword searching is the best way to finding something on CL.
Another little tip for those who uses Mac OS X, is this plugin http://wafflesoftware.net/hexpicker/ so that you can work with a universal hex color palette in every cocoa app.
About illy, take another look at your mail Lauren :-)
Esben,
No, no! I wasn’t saying you were off topic, not at all! I was going off topic with my dislike of Illustrator’s color handling (I could go into detail…). I didn’t know that Kuler was based on ColourLovers. I really don’t use either site extensively. And I’ll go check my mail right now :)
Well perhaps you should send me a list of things you dislike about illy. That could be a helpful blogpost, i think
Esben,
Just sent you an email!
Everyone else,
Esben is crafting a post (more likely several posts) on using Illustrator. Should be good!!