View Full Version : Choosing colours that match
Hiya,
My problem I am terrible at design and drawing and stuff. :(
It seems that when I make homepages I always choose colours that makes reading the text hard or dull or whatever.
Anyways, I was wondering is any of you out there have any guidelines which you follow when you design your layout, colouring etc of your website?
For example, checkout this page.
http://jnwl.net/viewwow.php
Its a standard "guestbook"," tag wall" , or whatever you call it page where user can submit feedback. Its dull isn't it? You might reconize the colours from this forum. Anyways, how come on my page it looks dull, but on the powweb forum it doesn't?
What colours would you have used?
hope you can help,
flich
http://www.bagism.com/colormaker/
http://www.imagitek.com/bcs.html
Your page is returning a 404 error, so I'm not able to see your color scheme, but rancher has suggested a few sites you might wish to take a look at, as they might help you!
Hope this helps!
Colormaker is phantasic, thanks for the link, Rancher!
Here is another interesting site:
http://www.paletteman.com/
Joanne
Hello,
Thanks for all you links, that will give me something to look at. They are nice tools to try out colour combos.
But I was maybe also hoping for some err..as we say in Denmark "Goldgrains", cool tips and experience, do and don'ts when working with colour. I know it is impossible to make every visitor to a site happy, but atleast make it so they don't leave.
I bet we have all tried it. Enter a homepage with good content, but the colours are just so bad for the eyes that ones leaves. eg. red background, blue text, green blink text (luckyly blink isn't seen much anymore)
MannInc, about the 404 error? I dunno whats wrong, the link works fine for me. Anyone else get that error?
Ok, by now it probably sounds like I am a colour freak, I'm really not, its just what I am trying to improve right now.
Again thanks for your responses.
flich
Two of my pet peeves are: black backgrounds and small print.
The use of black can be done wisely if in small portions, but I find it very hard to focus on a completely black background. Some sites like to use tiny print - I'm out of there in a flash. Why in the world would anybody go to all the work to create a site then make the print hard to read? Yeah, I think 'blink' was cool in about 1995.........OH, and I absolutely hate music unless I have the opportunity to turn it OFF....and scrolling text is rather annoying, although it has it's place.....I'm on a roll!
Back to color - much depends on who is coming to your site and their tastes. I want my pages viewed at length, so my graphics load fairly fast and the text is easy to read, meaning big enough and strong colors. The font also makes a big difference - some words in black/bold something are impossible to figure out because the letters run together. I love script fonts, but don't use them on web pages very often since they tend to be hard to read.
alphadesk
4-14-02, 11:48 PM
Mother nature seems to always get it right. Look to nature for your colors.
The colors you see in the hills, valleys, mountains, oceans are all colors that human nature will respond to with emotion.
If you see a mountain and its gray, some other color stands out from the mountain - it matches.
Get the idea?
AlphaDesk,
That was sheer poetry. Gotta love it when someone put it's like that :)
IMO choosing colors is one of that special designers abilities ... if you do not "feel" it than it's not yours. Yes, of course, you can learn some basics if you will read some clever books and articles but if it's not inside of you than you will never get to the 'peak' of this skill .... Some people design, some people code, some people advertise, some drive, some study ...
I think your right, choosing colors is a designers ability and you just to have it in you...but at the same sense I think many can be shown the proper technique and ideas behind color combination that may help them improve thier abilities to choose. Color combinations don't just mean adding colors together, they can set the mood or human response to the combination. A green color combination give the fresh feeling, where a red color combination give off a more intense feeling. Blue a cooling or subdue feeling. Color combination are more than just throwing colors together, but getting a response that allows people to want to return to your site.
lostdreamer
4-18-02, 05:40 PM
Just wanted to throw in my two cents (and that's about all it's worth!)...
I'll echo what the others have written with regards to color being the designer's preference, but I'll add that you want to take into account your audience.
In saying that, I mean that different colors elicit different responses out of people (the so-called psychology of color). If you've ever spent a good amount of time with a woman (what's that?! ;) ), you've inevitably heard "warm tones" and "cool tones", perhaps within the context of makeup or clothing. While this may sound feminine, there is a lot of truth to it. Blues and greens typically have a "cool" (not, like "rad", "bad", or "awesome") feeling to them, and reds, browns, and yellows have a "warm" feeling to them. These connotations come from, what AlphaOne hit on, nature. Blues and greens are associated with cool because of oceans and rainforests / forests, etc, while reds, browns, and yellows are warm because of deserts, sun, etc.
On a second parameter, colors give a notion of "speed". Reds and their kin are "faster" than blues, and there is a similar speed connotation between the brightness or lightness WITHIN a hue or color (i.e., a darker red may be connoted as "faster" than a lighter red or a pink).
On a final parameter, when it comes to combining colors for your site, there is the range of conservative to liberal design. Conservative color choices would be a website with monochromatic colors (different shades of blue in one site, different shades of red in one site). To elicit a more "bold" "wow!" "zap-em" response, go for complimentary colors, matching purple or a deep blue with a yellow or a golden orange. To see complimentary colors, look at any color wheel, and if you were to draw the diameter on the wheel, the two colors that the line draws through are complimentary.
Again, your choice of color(s) will depend on your audience and the effect you want them to feel when they view your site. There is nothing wrong with a conservatively designed site, or a boldly designed site, just as long as you hit your target and do it right.
Hope this helped. Good luck!
btw, hope no one took offense to the "woman" comment above; i sure didn't. then again, i'm one of 'em. :eek:
I just tried the page again and it came up fine for me now. I'm not quite sure why I got a 404 error before, but it doesn't really matter.
The gray background, with a outer table and inner table with yellow cells isn't too bad. I actually use a white background, with a black outer table, and an inner table with yellow, blue and light gray cells.
You might wish to look at that page in both IE and Netscape though. You'll see a big difference between the browsers.
I checked the site on IE6 and Netscape6 and they looked both the same. However, since people were talking about color choice, yellow and grey doesn't work for me. It looks boring....
Joanne
Guess I should have stated the version I checked the site under in Netscape.
Hope this helps!
hiya all,
Thanks for all of your replies!
I have actually been out walking and roller-skating , checking out ' mother nature'. no mountains in Denmark, but I live near the woods.
Problems is, that even though it looks cool when mother nature does it, its still hard to get the colours down on the page. And theres also a difference when you look at a green grass field filled with lots of colours from different flowers, and you look at a webpage with green background and lots of colours text. It makes the text hard to read.
But still, I seem to get the idea behind your posts. I guess I must also realize that chosing good colour schemes is something that one must learn by trial and error and experience.
As for being compatible with Netscape (or other browsers), I have to admit that I am to lazy to bother. Once upon a time I was a Netcaper, but it just isn't good anymore. IMHO, IE is the best one now. Anyways my account here at powweb is just for fun and a playground I use for testing my php-programming and design skills. I normally work with JAVA servlets and windows programming (C++).
Aye, the yellow and gray page is very dull and boring, thats why I asked for tips. :) And now I have some ideas thanks to all your help. Thanks people! I'll try them laterz, but now I am going outside, the sun is out! :D
flich
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