Learning about colour in design
Of all the design details covered in the first tutorial, colour seemed to spark a lot of interest. It is also an important aspect of creating an identity and increasing usability and legibility.
About color
Learning about color from two perspectives:
- [How color influences the user] by Katherine Nolan
- Colloquial color associations
- [Color My World] By Molly E. Holzschlag
- "Enthusiasm can lead to overuse of color in inappropriate venues. What's more, people without design backgrounds have a fatal tendency to want to design for themselves rather than for their audience. ... Whether you're a newcomer to visual design or an experienced designer, you can benefit from thinking about some basic approaches to global visual design. 'The first rule is to take that particular product and service and find a color naturally associated with it,' recommends Morton. 'Let's say the site is about healthy food. There are certain colors that are associated with natural food. [If it's] firecrackers—you'd choose something associated with fire, such as red'."
- [Natural Selections] by Luke Wroblewski
- Sites which are uniform and same as all others "create mundane experiences for their users and fail to make a positive connection with their audience... One easily remedied cause of such drab design is color. Perhaps no other design element has as much influence on how we feel in a space (a website, a home, etc.) as color."
- [Emotion and Design]
- "Advances in our understanding of emotion and affect have implications for the science of design. Affect changes the operating parameters of cognition: positive affect enhances creative, breadth-first thinking whereas negative affect focuses cognition, enhancing depth-first processing and minimizing distractions. Therefore, it is essential that products designed for use under stress follow good human-centered design, for stress makes people less able to cope with difficulties and less flexible in their approach to problem solving. Positive affect makes people more tolerant of minor difficulties and more flexible and creative in finding solutions. Products designed for more relaxed, pleasant occasions can enhance their usability through pleasant, aesthetic design. Aesthetics matter: attractive things work better."
Colour Tools and References
Tools
Colour Mixing Tools:
Checking Accessbility:
- [Vischeck] is a way of showing you what things look like to someone who is color blind You can [check an URL]
- The NILS accessiblity toolbar will help you see your web site through the eyes of people with varying disabilities, such as colour blindness, glaucoma. etc. You can download it from this site: [Accessibility Toolbar]
References