Color is everywhere and conveys a message even if we don't
realize it. While this message can vary by culture it pays to know what
colors "say" in your own corner of the universe, and even what color means
to your target market.
If you don't think that color speaks just complete this
sentence, "red means ---- and green means ?" even a child will know what
red means stop and green means go. If such simple ideas work for all of a
given culture or market what could it mean to the graphic design of your
website, brochure, or product if you know some of this information.
First let's start with the basics. The color wheel. We've
all seen it. The color wheel shows the basic colors, each wheel is
different in how many shades of each color is shown, but they are
essentially the same.
Color harmony, colors that go together well. These will be
colors that are next door to each other on the color wheel. Such as blue
and green. In reference to clothes these colors match each other.
Instinctively most of us know which colors go together when we dress
ourselves every morning.
Color complements, colors that set each other off, they
complement each other. These are colors that are opposite on the color
wheel. Such as blue and orange.
Color depth, colors can recede or jump forward. Remember
that some colors seem to fall back such as blue, black, dark green, and
brown. Other colors will seem to step forward such as white, yellow, red,
and orange. This is why if you have a bright orange background it may seem
to fight with any text or images that you place on it. The orange will
always seem to move forward.
Now you have the basics so let's go further. Just because
to colors go together or complement each other doesn't mean that yo
necessarily want to use them on your project. I opened this article with
the meaning of colors now here is an example, keep in mind this is one
example from western culture.
Color Survey: what respondents said colors mean to them.
Happy = Yellow Inexpensive = Brown
Pure = White Powerful = Red (tomato)
Good Luck = green Dependable = Blue
Good tasting = Red (tomato) High Quality = Black
Dignity = Purple Nausea = Green
Technology = Silver Deity = White
Sexiness = Red (tomato) Bad Luck = Black
Mourning = Black Favorite color = Blue
Expensive = Gold Least favorite color = Orange
So in designing your project it's important to know what
colors mean. You can now see why a black back ground with green type would
be bad, beyond being nearly impossible to read, if your target market
thinks that black represents mourning and green makes them sick. There are
exceptions to every rule of course.
When you are familiar with software applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Flash and other drawing programs, I know you are also very much familiar with the swatches. Swatches contain selection of different colors that you can use during the creation of your web design, graphic design, and animation. Know what, we have a new innovation in these swatches. This is the so-called Color Blender.
According to the blog entitled “Color Blender” which was posted by Neil last October 27, 2004 at www.eightlines.com, the author mentioned that this Color Blender allows you to take two colors and see blends of up to 10 different ones from which you can get their HTML Hex codes.
How can you do it? It’s actually as simple as 1-2-3. The following procedures were also mentioned in the said article. First, you need to pick a color value format, input two valid CSS color values in the format you chose, and pick the number of midpoints you'd like to see. During this step, the palette will show the colors you input as well as the requested number of midpoint colors and the values of those colors. All numbers are rounded to the nearest integer. When you click on a square in the "waterfall" display, it will fill in the appropriate value for whichever input is highlighted. And, when you switch between value formats, it will translate whatever values are in place. Clicking on the "Clear" button removes all values and colors, but does not change the current value format.
With this, graphic art professionals and web developers can now experiment more in the color combinations in their projects thus, making them more creative and innovative in their line of work. I would like to commend the programmers of this simple yet so important program. More power!
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