Power of the color wheel

[Travis Newbury]

Ok, I have kept quite for several years now but the last site I looked
at made me speak up.

<rant>
One of the biggest design errors I see on most sites is the God awful
choices people choose for colors. The exact same design can go from
looks ok, to looks awesome by simply using a color chart or color
wheel to pick your colors. People do not realize how much color plays
a part in our lives and how we react to things, including selling
something or keeping one's attention.

There are a ton of free pallet creators that allow you to enter in the
base color (or an image) and it produced the color pallet for your
selection. google "color wheel" for a list. Most good drawing
programs have this functionality built in, or available as a macro or
add on.

Try it, if you used css it should be pretty easy to switch colors
around a little. Take you non complimentary color site and put it
side by side with one you used a color wheel on and see if that alone
does not improve the look of your site.
</rant>

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Travis Newbury

One of the biggest design errors I see on most sites is the God awful
choices people choose for colors. The exact same design can go from
looks ok, to looks awesome by simply using a color chart or color
wheel to pick your colors. People do not realize how much color plays
a part in our lives and how we react to things, including selling
something or keeping one's attention.

What's really funny about this is all the graphic designers turned web
designers who suddenly forget about color. Eh?

Now, I am working on a site <http://www.hazbethlaneinfo.com>, and I had
the swatches from the architect. Great! Colors are already chosen -
maybe the RBG values are on the paint card? No. Okay, go the the
manufacturers website. Have to install a newer version of Flash. Okay.
Maybe an RGB? Nope. Still have to use an eyedropper from TopStyle (Yes
I could have used the FF ext, but I wasn't running FF at the time). One
thing I did do was great a class for each paint name - won't use it,
just to have so I can remember which color is which.