Hot answers tagged color-theory
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Stay Simple - Don't try to do anything too fancy or adventurous at first. Get the basics down first, then you can start experimenting. Don't try to emulate the Star Trek computer interface.
Be Consistent - A consistent design is part of the foundation of a good design. Keep track of your margins, sizes, and placement and maintain them throughout the design.
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One useful tool is Color Scheme Designer:
http://colorschemedesigner.com/
You specify a starting color and a type of color scheme and it will generate a palette for you and allow you to modify that palette.
The nice thing about this tool is that you can see how it chooses the other colors based on the color you select. There is also a tool to simulate how ...
14
Dark backgrounds are generally considered to be less readable than light backgrounds. A sufficient level of contrast is also very important to readability.
In general, I would recommend dark backgrounds for designs that have a large amount of media content, but very little text. Darker backgrounds can really make photographs stand out and you'll find many ...
13
Don't despair: the perception of colours is influenced heavily by contrast with surrounding colour and by context cues, so, even when you have to work with colours you hate, there are always ways of influencing how they are perceived.
Here's a few things you can potentially work with:
Contrast. Where different shades collide, they are perceived as more ...
11
Any colour works with black and white.
Any colour you pick will be effectively an accent colour. This gives you free reign to pick what ever colour will be most effective for the communication of your design intent.
Red is often used with a black and white palette since it is both a bold, powerful colour with a huge number of associated connotations. this ...
11
You need to read about a good book of color theory to understand at least the general principle, for example on what is Primary and Secondary color, Complementary colors etc... otherwise you will not get the importance of some palette choices that you will make.
On the web my favourite at the moment one is: Kuler of Adobe , as well I used to use ...
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Jim Krause's design basics index gave me a very good summary of the basics of composition, color and type. I wasn't a huge fan of most of his own examples, but they illustrate his points really well and he touches on a few valuable things I haven't seen mentioned much elsewhere. And perhaps most importantly, reading it made me really excited to go out and ...
8
I'm a programmer myself and for me the following books where very helpful for me:
The Non-Designer's Design Book - Robin Williams -
This books covers the basics of graphic design.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain - Betty Edwards
The book for developing your drawing skills.
The Humane Interface - Jef Raskin
This book provokes some thoughts about user ...
8
There's sometimes a slight overlap between web development and web design, but I don't think web developers should try to be full-time designers unless they're willing to put as much effort into it as they did learning to program. It's not something that you can just dabble in on weekends and be good at.
If this is so you can learn to be your own web ...
8
Perhaps not relevant to all cases, but for web prgrammers one of the biggest things that stands out to me, which perhaps bridges the gap a little bit, is to learn CSS inside and out, as being able to design well doesn't mean anything if you can't integrate it into your project that you are creating.
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1) Decide on a palette early (there have been a couple of threads about sites that generate palettes automatically). Your palette should include (but isn't necessarily limited to): a "main" color (that's complimented by the other colors you use), a contrasting font color, and one or two complimentary colors.
2) If you have a logo, the colors of the logo ...
7
Please have a look at these websites. they have pulled off lighter colors your are interested in. You can work around something like these websites.
www.nature.com
BBC news
Stick Sports
TED
Scitable
History.com
Youtube
As Scott mentioned in his comment, "White is your friend".
You can also look here for some more inspiration.
I hope ...
7
I found this explanation:
CIE lightness is a psychophysical scale based on colourimetric
measurements, and may not quite coincide with lightness as experienced
by an observer, even under ideal conditions. In particular, certain
colours have a tendency to look lighter than a grey of the same CIE
lightness, an effect known as the ...
7
The science of readability is by no means new, and some of the best research comes from advertising works in the early 80s. This information is still relevant today.
First up is this quote from a paper titled “Improving the legibility of visual display units through contrast reversal”. In present time we think of contrast reversal meaning black-on-white, ...
7
Readability is all about contrast. I'd try and determine how dark each background color is in greyscale, and if it is above a 50% grey (more dark than light), use white text, below 50% use black text. This will ensure that you have at least a 50% contrast (difference in tone) to make your text readable.
This method is a lot easier than trying to play with ...
6
I think you should be using RGB complements (in the "Light" answer). The RYB complements were from an era when people didn't know of light's primary colors being RGB. RGB complements look nicer, in my opinion. Here's some random person's (Lira) post (perhaps someone can give me a more credible source?):
RYB is the traditional colour wheel,
used by ...
6
Your first problem is that "learning" and "attention seeking" are somewhat at odds. If your color scheme is trying to get attention, by definition it's distracting, and you aren't going to be able to concentrate as well (and thereby learn).
If you want something not distracting, a clean, light-colored background (white, off-white, light beige, light gray) ...
6
You could use Lab colour space to find your matches. Colours with the same L value as your target gray will look nearly identical when converted to grayscale.
For example, a Lab gray of (50, 0, 0), will look very similar to the Lab reds (50, 30, 0), (50, 50, 30), and (50, 50, 50) when converted to grayscale. Samples below use Photoshop (Image > Mode > ...
6
Goes back to this illusion.....
The squares marked A and B are the exact same shade of gray.
Surrounding values alter the human perception. One reason why a neutral grey desktop is very beneficial when doing color critical work.
I don't know all the science behind it. I expect it would take a medical degree to fully understand.
(photo from ...
6
Yes, it's been considered and manufactured. One such technology is the Quattron display technology from Sharp. This technology uses a fourth yellow sub-pixel which "increases the range of displayable colors, and which may mimic more closely the way the brain processes color information".
6
It seems like you're looking for the analogue of complementary colours, but in the lightness space rather than hue. As far I can tell, no such general mapping can exist.
Suppose you could compensate for the effect by assuming a linear correlation between the background and the foreground, so that as the background darkens the foreground text lightens by the ...
6
Value is essentially the darkness of the pigment. Less value equates to a darker color. If you take a color and remove all hue, you are left with value - basically greyscale. Brightness is another term used for value. Often brightness is a bit easier to remember since more value means a "brighter" color.
Basic Value scale
Saturation is essentially the ...
5
To clarify, does the title sit in the header? Do you want your headings to use the same color?
I normally do a test to actually see what works best. I made a copy of your header and added some of the suggested colors. I also added drop shadows and outer glow, just experimenting.
My decision would be based on what I want to do with headings. If I wanted to ...
5
As I answered previously at Good Resources for Colour Schemes?:
From the answers to Picking colors that don't clash:
Color Scheme Designer
How color schemes work
Simultaneous and successive contrast
Wucious Wung's Principles of Color Design
Josef Albers' Interaction of Color
Creating Your Own Color Palettes
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The main concern with this aspect of readability is contrast. White text on a black background contrasts the same way that black text on a white background does. White on black is actually easier on the eyes when viewed on light-emitting screens than black on white, because less light is being transmitted.
The black on white, or dark on light, style of ...
5
First of all, was the logo designed "for the website," or is this the company logo? If it's the company logo, those are the corporate colors, and I don't think you should start adding other colors because you think the existing ones are "boring." In certain industries, "boring is beautiful," and adding "flash" makes the client look bad. That's the opposite ...
5
The first trick to being a good designer is to actually see what you you are looking at and then verbalize it in some manner. This takes practice.
The second trick is to have good building blocks for your design.
The third trick is to move your components around until they work. For something as simple as this, you can literally print it out, cut out the ...
5
As CK1 says, getting a darker variant of a colour using HSB/HSV and HSL (Hue, Saturation, Brightness/Value or Lightness) scales is easy. Reduce the variable that corresponds to brightness, lightness or value. In both HSL and HSV, that takes you straight down towards black, keeping the same hue and saturation. (HSB is basically the same as HSV)
Image source
...
5
The challenge with greyscale on screen is a lack of richness. That is, if you stick with strict greys. There are of course variations of grey that are in fact chromatic neutrals. IOW, they are not completely devoid of saturation.
Albert Munsell, had some great theories about the use of color that may be helpful to you. In particular, his thoughts on color ...
5
Green, yellow, and red can’t go together? The Ethiopians must be terribly insulted. Google for green, yellow, and red images, and I think you find several attractive examples (along with ugly ones).
How well any set of colors goes together depends on the exact color coordinates, and the relative positions, shapes, on sizes of the colored objects, and the ...
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