Merry Christmas, all!
For those of us who are not officially designers, but still like to create, it can be hard to come up with a color scheme. I had a few websites I liked to use for inspiration back when I wore all the hats here at T&S (scary, I know), and some other neat ones have come to my attention since then. So whether you’re designing a website, a brochure or just a business card, here’s some websites that can help you come up with a color scheme.
Sometimes websites look awful. You’ve probably looked at a website and thought the colors were a poor choice. Or maybe you have worked with a web designer and the colors on your site didn’t turn out exactly like you wanted. While it may or may not be the designer’s fault, things are not entirely in his or her control.
Inexpensive monitors (the ones most consumers purchase) each come off the assembly line with slight differences in color. And even after that, the color on those monitors will drift over time. On most monitors, the drift is so small and the life of the monitor short enough, that it just doesn’t matter in day to day use. But when you’re approving designs for your business, that small difference will seem bigger to you.
So there are slight variations just from monitor to monitor, and that’s an unavoidable fact. While your designer can (and should) calibrate their monitors, that won’t let them see exactly what it looks like on your monitor, or anyone else’s, for that matter. All calibration does is give them a good average of what the site will look like on most monitors.
If you are about to embark on some web design work on your computer, or if you’d just like better color, there is an affordable option. While monitor calibrators used to be much more expensive, you can get one like the Spyder 2 Express
Another, less expensive option, is to simply check your website on a few friends’ computers. Or, failing that, email them a link and ask them if they could check themselves. Get some feedback on the website color. Your monitor may be way off, or it could be that you were absolutely right, and the color is horrible.
Either way, don’t judge your website by its appearance on a single monitor.
Probably one of the most important pieces of knowledge a designer could have is understanding the difference between CMYK and RGB color modes.
CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black) -for printing (subtractive color)
RGB (Red Green Blue) - for screen display (additive color)
Say you have white paper with black dots, and you allow 50% of the paper to show through: you would have a shade of gray. Depending on the concentration of the dots is what gives you different shades. CMYK works the same way with Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, and this is how you get different colors (1,000,000 options). By changing the shade of your paper, you can also achieve different colors.
Rather than using dots, RGB color shades are produced with different levels from the electronic source. Unlike the 100 variations per color using CMYK, there are 256 shades/levels of brightness per color using RGB, which means 16, 77,216 colors total.
Knowing the difference between the two is vital and the change is very apparent in your work.