Color Theory
Color is a great thing. Obviously. Without it we’d all be bland. And ever since my years in grade school, I’ve been learning about the color wheel. The color wheel is a circle (again obviously) of colors that rotate around each other with their compliment across from each other. Some common color palettes are monochromatic (all variations of the same hue), complimentary (compliments of each other), warm (red, orange, yellow), cool (blue, green, purple), Primary (red, yellow, blue), Secondary (green, orange, purple), etc, etc…
In web design, color is very important since you need to make something visually pleasing to the viewer. If you have colors that clash or too many colors in a page, it can seem confusing and dissonant to the viewer, which can make them dislike the page and not even get to the content. The color can also affect the mood of the page, bright colors can make the page seem fun and exciting while dull colors can make the page calm and serene.
A way to pick your colors is by color psychology. Color psychology is the study of how color affects people and their moods. This is something to think about when you are picking out colors for your projects. Pick colors that make people feel the way you want your website to feel.
While using Kuler or just making schemes on Illustrator, often times my color schemes are based off of real life objects that I am portraying in my work or if it is non-objective, I’ll just pick something that looks good to me and flows with the work. Color is a different thing to each person on some levels, but on the most general, they look the same.
References:
http://www.worqx.com/color/
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/8-colour-theory/
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/color_an_investigation
http://poynterextra.org/cp/colorproject/color.html
http://www.mariaclaudiacortes.com/#
