Color techniques for a website

This is something which always made my life difficult. Selecting some colors for a website has to do with a number of parameters such as content (e.g. what is going to be the target group), location (e.g. white represents purity in Western cultures but death in Eastern ones), general style of it etc.

Lately, I have focused on two techniques which solve most of my issues. They are not supposed to solve all issues concerning coloring, but they are pretty handy. Here they come.

Photos and Photoshop

(This is a technique I first read at the website of Andy Clarke. Since then I have found a lot of similar approaches.)

Sometimes life provides the best ideas. A harmonical photo (clear or not - it doesn’t matter) could create a perfect color palette. There are thousands of photos in Flickr, so this is a place to begin from. It is even better to have your own photos. An alternative to photos is art paintings e.g. Van Gogh paintings can be a great source.

From this point on it is Photoshop that helps. By using the filter Pixallate > Mosaic a photo is being divided into smaller or larger squares. With the Eyedropper Tool you can accurately select the color of each interesting square. In the end you can have a great color palette.

Now the question is: when a photo is good enough? This is something which has to do with experience in first place. Harmony is something perceivable, if not provable. It doesn’t have to do with the clarity of the photo or the feelings raised because of it.

Playing with one color

The Color Palette Creator  is a tiny but exceptional tool. In a few words it uses blended colors and transparency to create color schemes.

I use this tool when I need less, not more, colors. This way I can have excellent alternatives for secondary menus, shadows or borders. The idea behind this technique is to use exactly the colors you need. It is not a constraint in any way.

Are these techniques enough? Don’t you need more?

Out there there are some really impressive tools like Kuler. I decided to write about these two techniques only because:

• When you begin by real photos you sometimes come up to original or unexpected results. This is important because it actually expands the limits of the design.
• Color is not as simple as it looks. There is a whole theory behind it and many parameters difficult to be grasped. All this might be a serious obstacle when time matters.

More about color you can find in my Magnolia bookmarks. The sources gathered there are valuable for me so it might be useful for you too.