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Painting_The_Canvas_Of_Your_Website
| Painting The Canvas Of Your Website
There's more to selecting colors for your website than just
choosing what you think is pretty. You also need to be aware of
the psychology of color, and what's easy on your visitor's eyes.
I recently visited a Goth site that had dark purple letters on a
black background. It felt Gothie, but the copy was so hard to
read that I gave up after a few words. Another site had an
almost fluorescent orange background. It was so bright that it
hurt my eyes. I left as fast as I could hit the Back button.
While the creators of these sites may think they looked great,
in reality they chased people away. What good is having a
website if people leave after just a few seconds. Whatever these
people were trying to accomplish, it failed. If people leave
your web page before they can read your copy or look at the
products or services you sell, then the site is useless, no
matter how great you think it looks.
The first thing you need to do is decide what colors will best
fit the theme of your site. You can then use these colors when
you, or a website designer, create your site. A Goth site may
include black, dark red and purple, while one for Renaissance
Faires could use earth tones and a florist may want pinks, reds
and purples.
Here are some common responses that people feel for several
colors. Black - seriousness, darkness, mystery,
secrecy, power, elegance, death, evil, formality. Blue -
trustworthiness, success, seriousness, calmness, power,
professionalism, health, tranquility, knowledge, integrity.
Brown - earth, nature, tribal, primitive, simplicity,
stability, masculine qualities. Green - money, nature,
animals, health, healing, life, harmony, ambition, greed,
jealousy. Grey - neutrality, indifference, reserved.
Orange - comfort, creativity, celebration, fun, youth,
affordability. Pink - softness, sweetness, innocence,
youthfulness, tenderness, romance, love, friendship. Purple
- royalty, justice, ambiguity, uncertainty, luxury, fantasy,
dreams, romance. Red - love, passion, rage, anger, joy,
sexuality, danger, warning, excitement, food, impulse, action,
adventure. White - innocence, purity, cleanliness,
simplicity, goodness, virginity. Yellow - curiosity,
playfulness, cheerfulness, amusement, caution, joy.
Once you decide on a main color for your site, you need to
select other colors that you can use. After all, you don't want
a monochrome site, that would be very boring. You can choose
colors that have the same hue, such as various shades of green,
or you can use complimentary colors, like green and red. Just
remember to selections shouldn't be an annoyance to your
visitors.
You can easily select the colors you want by visiting one of the
following links. Some of these sites will help you pick a main
color while others will show you what will work well with that
central theme. Visibone -
http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/big.html MoreCrayons -
http://www.morecrayons.com/ Color Scheme Generator 2 -
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html Color
Schemer - http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html Defence
Mechanism - http://www.defencemechanism.com/color/
Slayeroffice - http://slayeroffice.com/tools/color_palette/
YCOLN Design Services - http://www.ycoln-
design.com/WebColorCharts/WebColors.asp Color Blender -
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend/
After you have chosen the colors you want to use, I'd suggest
trying them out on a sample page. See how they work together. If
they look good to you, then add some text to see how easy it is
to read. You can change text color if need be. I've seen various
sites use white, red or beige text, and it worked very well. If
you are going to have pictures or artwork on the site, you
should also put several pieces on your sample page. Make sure
that the pictures show up well and don't blend into the
background, or that the colors in the artwork don't clash with
your site.
I've found that it's a delicate balancing act between my vision
of a site and what it looks like in reality. Always keep
usability as one of your key measures when designing a site. If
people find your site hard to use, look at or read, then they
will leave quickly, never come back and won't tell anyone about
your site. Or they may submit your site to one of those website
that lists terrible sites. There's just some publicity that you
don't want.
So think about what you want and use the sites I've listed.
You'll find that choosing the colors for your site is fast and
easy and you'll get a site that's more in tune with the feeling
you want to convey.
About the author:
http://www.CreativeCauldron.com Jeff Colburn is a website
designer and writer. His goal is to make the process of creating
or updating your website easy and simple for you, while creating
a website that meets all your needs and expectations. Jeff can
also create all of the copy for your website.
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