Posted by on Dec 23, 2008 in Art, How To, My Business Adventures, Webdesign | 1 comment

My best friend asked me the other day, “How do you pick good colors?“.  Beyond the shock I got trying to grasp the idea that my buddy was trying to design something (he always says he can’t design), I got to thinking to myself, “hmm, how DO I pick good colors for my projects?”

I didn’t have a good answer for him. I had color theory in school…but honestly, how much of that I really retained is another matter.  In practice, what I really do to find colors for my various projects is a sometimes a mix of trial-and-error & plain good luck.

Here I thought I’d give you examples of what you can try doing to get colors to use for your projects. Keep in mind, colors that might be suitable for a web project might not always be effective in print, but you can use these quick tips as a way to start.  Remember there’s a whole HUGE practice in color theory (enough to write books about and take a whole years worth of class on) but I’m not going to get into that.  This is just quick real-world tips I’ve found useful.

Online Tools

Here are some online tools I’ve found useful from time to time to help me develop color schemes. You know, these tools are often hit-and-miss. What I usually do is decide on one color I really want to use for a project and then I’d jump on some of these tools to try finding colors that would complement that.

Here’s a great site called AVIVAdirectory that has a whole list of tools you can try using.

Sample from Images

Another method I might use in order to make a color scheme that fits the project is to see what images I might get from my client and then I’d sample colors from that.  Other time I might take work from an artist that inspires me and sample colors from them.

Take this Picasso image for example.  He’s been my favorite artist for a while now. Despite the fact that my dad says he turned into a “dirty old man” in his older years, I think he’s one of the best artists when it came to color handling.  Let’s say I sampled colors from the image above I’d get:

That’s not to shabby eh?  If it’s good enough for Picasso…

Sometimes I might an image and change the hue

You can get a whole new range of color combinations simply by adjusting the hues. The beauty about this is that they’ll still go together because they’re derived from the same source.

Sometimes I might take 2 different images and overlay them together in Photoshop so that other colors might turn up.  It’s a good way to get random colors, but at the same time it’s not really random because you’re mixing known sources together.  I’ve collected certain textural or color images over the years where I know they’re particularly effective in generating new color patterns for me.

Tip

Overall I told my buddy this quick tip — Use a bunch of colors that are within the same family (warm colors, cool colors) and then pick one color to act as your primary color…something that you’d use to call attention.  Like in a website you might use one stand-out color to act as your menu or link color.

Something like this for example where you get a few similar colors together and then you’d use the darker tone to work around the design as the primary focus.

Here’s a site where users have submitted color schemes they’ve used.

Good luck in finding your own project colors. If anyone’s got any other tips on ways you’ve found colors, please feel free to comment!