Oct
01
Designing web sites has as much to do with color than pretty pictures, type treatment or anything else. Often, as designers, we will get most everything else correct in the eyes of our clients except the colors. I have spent more time with a client about one hex value than the entire design. Have you ever gone back and forth over a background color? It all seems crazy sometimes, but with colors and everything else we must be patient and collective when communicating with our clients. For a great post on constructive criticism and how to respond to it, visit How To Respond Effectively To Design Criticism on Smashing Magazine. This post is about colors though, so let’s continue.
Every designer uses color differently, obviously some better than some. I’ll admit, choosing colors is not my strongest suit, but because of modern day apps and tools, I have a more confident and effective outlet for choosing colors on my projects. These tools also help me to experiment and try new things. Apps in general have streamlined my whole creative thought process. Let’s get to the good stuff. Below are a list of the color apps I use to extend my creativity. If you’re not already using these for your color palettes, ideas, and/or brainstorming process, then I suggest you get on board.
You can visit Kuler Online or if you have, I believe CS3 on up, you can use the Kuler Extension under Windows/Extensions/Kuler within the Adobe Software.
Unlike Kuler being a Flash App, Color Scheme Designer is an amazing jquery app online that allows you to visualize how type will look on top of certain colors as well as pick awesome color palettes. You can check it out.
Here are two must buy iPhone apps for designing with color on the go.
The Palettes app allows you to not only create color palettes, but also maintain and organize your palettes. What’s really cool is that wherever you go, you can create a palette on the fly whether its from a web site, a photograph, or one you might subconsciously or consciously develop.
CliqCliq Colors is another great iPhone app for generating color palettes. It has a different method of scaling color values than Palettes. Between these two apps, I’m set and have plenty of options on getting ideas for my next projects whether professional or personal.
Thanks. I hope you enjoyed this post. I would love to hear about your color stories, apps, extensions, and methods to developing awesome color schemes.
