Fundamentals of good design: Colour schemes
November 19, 2008
The importance of colour in design can never be overstated. Colour choices influence mood, emotion and tone; a carefully chosen colour scheme can clearly express a specific design style.
When I begin work on a new design project, I usually work at length on creating a good colour scheme. You’ll find more detail on this side of colour selection in my post Steps to choosing a successful colour scheme. To begin with, I have collected several examples of interesting colour schemes online for inspiration.
Dan Trachtenberg
We Heart Stuff
Jeff Croft
Charles and Marie
Emily Forgot
Parker Smith Software
Wed.la
Itty Bitty Bistro
Designmind
Settlement Perspectives
Marcos Souza
Swesocks
Ginger Park
Third Frame Studios
The common element in all of the colour schemes displayed here is their simplicity. How many have you seen which contain more than three base colours?
If you’re feeling inspired by these examples, remember to read Steps to choosing a successful colour scheme, where I outline how I go about choosing a colour scheme for a design project.
The good news is that I will be going into further detail on colour selection in future posts: the easiest way to catch them is to subscribe to my blog.
10 Responses to “Fundamentals of good design: Colour schemes”
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I’m planning to redesign my portfolio/blog/twitter/resume to match the same theme. Before, they were all so disconnected. I started by picking a color palette I liked (already applied it to my twitter and blog).
Color palette used to be something I concocted gradually as I built a graphic/site etc., but I’m starting to see the value in determining it first.
I would love tips on how to find the “right” colors.
After reading this, I’m thinking I may have chose too many colors…
Well done. A wonderful collection of sites for inspiration. I look forward to your follow ups on creating colour schemes. I would love to know what, if any, tools you use for generating schemes. Stumbled :)
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It’s absolutely true that great designs are often based on 3 or 4 colors!
Choosing a color scheme before actually start designing (off course choosing colors also belongs to designing) is a good way to not get messed up with too many colors.
Adobe Kuler is a pretty good site to find a nice color scheme.
finding nice colour and matching is very hard way if you don’t know a combination with 3 or 4 colours. If you blend it with multiple colours how is your site look like? very unhappy for your eyes looking for it.
with a good scheme colour for your design site is very cool looking good.
Lauren:
It’s really interesting to hear how you’ve put together the colour scheme for your site gradually. I think it’s not uncommon for design elements in a website to be altered gradually (especially when the site is owned by the person who built it) but this is the first time I’ve heard of that process being used for colour. I’m glad this post has been useful for you, too.
Aaron:
Thanks. I’ll be discussing online and offline tools in the next post, for sure.
Santhos:
You’re right in saying that it’s important for the selection of colours to take place early in the design process. I agree with you about Adobe Kuler and its usefulness.
I’m usually go to colourlovers.com to find required color scheme, website colorschemer.com also has nice schemes and very useful application to choose and match colours.
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Thanks for a great article and cool designs!
I can only agree that it works. Site Layout, content and good meta tags is the key to success with SEO.
James:
SEO is what draws people to your site – content, good coding and the right use of meta tags are part of the basics of effective SEO. A great layout and colour scheme will go a long way to keeping those visitors on your site for longer once they arrive.
I would have to agree with James. Personally, I think a good site should have a good layout and design. It will really give the viewer a big impression of your site and it will also tell how professional and competent it is. Like what James said, It’s the key to a successful website. Anyway, good job on the article.