color theory is a body of practical guidance to color mixing and the visual impacts of specific color combinations.

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80
votes
11answers
3k views

Tips and sources for beginning designers

Thanks to the internet, graphic design and programming are becoming increasingly overlapping fields. As a programmer, I constantly find myself needing basic knowledge of Graphic Design, but have ...
27
votes
8answers
975 views

Is there a good resource or tool to help build a palette/color scheme around colors I select?

No matter how nice the composition, flow, and lines of my design are, if I am not copying directly from nature, I have a very difficult time picking a decent color scheme. It either looks too drab, ...
22
votes
6answers
959 views

Sources for Color Theory or Psychology of Color

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good book/blog/forum that focuses on design principles such as psychology of color, specifically where it relates to picking a color palette for a communication ...
1
vote
4answers
258 views

Darker shade of a given color

What does it mean and how do I get a darker shade of a given color. For example if I have the color R = 53, G = 140, B = 205 or H = 204, S = 74, B = 80, or #358CCD What value do I change in ...
5
votes
3answers
456 views

Designing interesting looking websites in greyscale, minimal tones

I know a business that wanted a website to match their brand, and it would seem that they are allergic to colour. I think designs in greyscale can look amazing, especially in print, but it feels near ...
8
votes
4answers
302 views

Do high-content areas of a website need to be white/light-colored?

Many websites that are designed to be easy to read (eg. nytimes.com or ilovetypography.com) use white backgrounds with black fonts to make the content easy to read. Is it necessary to only use light ...
4
votes
5answers
345 views

Colors in Website Design

It's not a kind of question but rather it's a kind of thing which effects a lot in web designing. What are some important rules to follow for making a color combination in web design? I always fail ...
8
votes
2answers
731 views

How to calculate other colors with the same perceived lightness as a given gray value?

This is related to a question I asked on tex.stackexchange, which has a color aspect. The result of that question is the following image: I have drawn a series of gray squares on the left, with a ...
5
votes
4answers
226 views

If these colors all have the same lightness, then why does my brain tell me some are lighter than others?

My human brain has a certain sensation of how "bright" a color is. More formally there is Lightness: Human vision has a nonlinear perceptual response to brightness: a source having a luminance ...
5
votes
2answers
487 views

How do I select a high-contrast color set for a map?

Obviously, black & white are the highest contrast. I also want 2 sets of colors, so that regions on the map can be colored with good contrast. For instance, one region might be red, another ...
1
vote
0answers
134 views

Contrast Color with Red [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Need help with the Color Combination for the Red Can some one help me to find a color that contrast the color Red HEX: cd0001 I am looking for something i dark rang of ...
0
votes
3answers
112 views

How to pick large color palettes?

An institution I know has chosen the following colors for its theme: It is used as a banner at bottom of web pages, and the first green is used as the main “institutional” color. I wonder: does ...