Color: The root of all graphic designs
By Florie Lyn Masarate
Consistency should be the best practiced value in any kind of business. You also have to have a process to run things from day to day. This keeps things organized, can reduce time that is wasted and of course, saves more money. These are just some of the qualities that customers may be looking for in you. These factors are also the root of graphic design. In graphic design, all factors should point towards making your company look strong and secure in the eyes of your customers, old and new. How do you show strength and security without having to bring the customer into your office? One way is through colors. Believe it or not, color plays a big part in the message you are trying to deliver through the materials company are distributing. For instance, the color red is a strong color and it portrays not only strength, but also temper and anger. Red is one of the strongest colors. You may be asking what does color have to do with your business. Every company or business has a set of corporate colors. These colors can be found initially in your logo. More often than not, your logo will consist of two or three colors. If it is three, then these are your primary corporate colors. As set of secondary colors can be built from the three primaries. This would be your color palette. Here is how your colors come into play and how they work: 1. Gather all the pertinent information about your colors. You will need to know certain specifications like the Pantone Matching System. CMYK and RGB. 2. At the beginning of a project, all color information should be given to the designer or marketer. Specify which colors are the primary and which are the secondary. 3. Using full color pictures in the designs are fine. Just make sure that the colors in the photograph compliment those in your palette. By simply following these basic steps, you can be sure that your business is always showing its true colors. Remember, people can sometimes be so judgmental that they form an impression just by the colors they see initially. Strength and security will be projected to your customers. And you will have the satisfaction of knowing this when you see them choosing your products and services. All because of the color and the color palette you are using. For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.colorprintingwholesale.com
About the Author
Florie Lyn Masarate got the flair for reading and writing when she got her first subscription of the school newsletter in kindergarten. She had her first article published on that same newsletter in the third grade.
Web Site Color Design
The Role Of Color In Your Web Success
By Maricon Williams
Color is an attitude. It can make you strong, weak, wild, wanting, passionate and complete. Colors can influence our behavior, feelings and psyche. In fact, colors are oftentimes used as treatment to psychotics and other mentally incapacitated persons.
However, when it comes to web designing, many designers overlook the enigmatic power of colors. It can bring life to any image, text or graphics. It can create the atmosphere needed in order to capture the viewer's decision and loyalty. These are the reasons why colors should be on our topmost list of things that need to be considered in mounting a web site. You don't want a drab looking site, do you? It will appear, melancholic, chaotic, plain and boring. Thus, colors must be chosen in order to complement the site's ambiance, feelings and purpose.
Web browsers only see 256 colors. However, there are times when the number may not appear as such because no browser shares the same 256-color pallet. Nowadays, web browsers are sharing 216 common colors. Thus, in order to complement to other web browsers, web designers must stick to the 216-color pallet. If they go beyond this color pallet, chances are the colors may not exist on other browser. In order for the browser to display that particular color, it will need tiny dots from the colors native to the browser. The process is called dithering. Unfortunately, this will result to the distortion of some tiny dots. Further, this will make the image appear speckled and without a solid color. In connection to texts, dithering will make them blurry and hard to read.
Verdict: Web designers must use browser safe color when using solid color as a design element. However, caution must be exercised.
There are times when we feel we are tricked by our eyes. In fact there is what we call mirage? An optical illusion and there is a long list of optical illusions that can otherwise trick us. But there are times when we are neither tricked or deceived in fact it is an act of science. How do this happen?
At the back of our eyes, there is a thin layer of tissue. This layer of tissue contains millions of tiny light-sensing nerve cells which are called rods and cones. Our eyes have ample decoding cones. These cones are the ones responsible for responding to specific wavelengths of light. Say, when you look at a red box, the cones that have detected the red wavelength become exhausted and fatigued. As a result, opposite cones in the eyes start to enter and different colors are made apparent.
Eye fatigue is one of the important considerations in designing a web site. Thus, avoid colors that are tiring to the eyes. It can result to disaster and can further result to giving of wrong notion or idea to the viewers. Colors like red and yellow, strains the eye faster than any other colors. Thus, limit the use of these colors. Use them on areas that need emphasis and focus. This will surely pull viewers attention. Other that those areas - a big no-no!
About the Author
Please visit Web Development Services Pros site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com for comments and inquiries regarding this article.
How To Choose Your Website Colors
By Jason OConnor
Color is often overlooked in the business of optimizing websites for better returns on investments. Website sales can be greatly affected by simply changing its colors. Ever come across a website that uses some funky combination of print and background colors? If you ever want to experience an eye-twisting headache, try reading yellow print on a blue background. The reason you see black type on a white background so much is that it is the best color combination for reading, both on and offline.
And since it is even harder to read text on a monitor than it is on paper, we must all be especially careful with the colors we choose for our websites, or suffer less-than-optimal site traffic and repeat visitors.
Color choice should also be dictated by other, less obvious goals, when designing or re-vamping a website. It's important to realize that different colors invoke different emotions, are associated with specific concepts and say different things in each society. For instance, green often times is associated with freshness or money, which is fairly obvious if you think about it. But every color does this, and some of the emotions and concepts are more subtle. For example, white means pure, easy, or goodness and purple can be associated with royalty or sophistication. What's more, each color carries with it both positive and negative ideas. The emotions and concepts that you associate with specific colors may differ from other people's associations, but there are themes that run throughout each color. Here are some:
Red:
Positive: Sense of power, strength, action, passion, sexuality
Negative: Anger, forcefulness, impulsiveness, impatience, intimidation, conquest, violence and revenge
Yellow:
Positive: Caution, brightness, intelligence, joy, organization, Spring time
Negative: Criticism, laziness, or cynicism
Blue:
Positive: Tranquility, love, acceptance, patience, understanding, cooperation, comfort, loyalty and security
Negative: Fear, coldness, passivity and depression
Orange:
Positive: Steadfastness, courage, confidence, friendliness, and cheerfulness, warmth, excitement and energy
Ignorance: Ignorance, inferiority, sluggishness and superiority
Purple:
Positive: Royalty, sophistication, religion
Negative: Bruised or foreboding
Green:
Positive: Money, health, food, nature, hope, growth, freshness, soothing, sharing, and responsiveness
Negative: Envy, greed, constriction, guilt, jealousy and disorder
Black:
Positive: Dramatic, classy, committed, serious
Negative: Evil, death, ignorance, coldness
White:
Positive: pure, fresh, easy, cleanliness or goodness
Negative: Blind, winter, cold, distant
A major goal of marketers is to invoke emotion in their audience. We know that if we can cause some kind of an emotional reaction in the people we are marketing to and communicating with, we have a better chance of compelling them to buy from us. The battle between logic and emotion that rages in each of is usually won by emotion most of the time. By choosing the colors of our websites and online media with deliberate care, we are purposefully trying to invoke a specific emotional response that will increase sales. So pick your colors carefully.
Not only do colors evoke emotions, but they can communicate messages or concepts too. For example, look at http://www.clickitticket.com to see how color is used to communicate the new affiliation between Oak Web Works, LLC and ClickitTicket.com. The blues of Oak Web Works's logo swirl into the reds of ClickitTicket.com's logo. This can be interpreted as a melding of the two organizations, which is what the words underneath say, "in affiliation with". Also, the red of http://www.oakwebworks.com/tickets/ indicates action and passion, two essentials for people who want to attend theater, sporting events or concerts.
Another online ticket website, http://www.bestshowticketslasvegas.com/, has a different color approach. Its main colors are blue and purple, giving the site a comforting, secure and sophisticated feel. The main header on each page has all the colors in the rainbow in it, a collage of images, with the word 'Tickets' in large, white font. Much of the site is white too, which gives it a clean feel.
As a general rule of thumb, when Oak Web Works (http://www.oakwebworks.com) designs websites, one primary color and one secondary or complimentary color will be chosen. These colors are based on the specific audience and market of our client and the messages the client wants to communicate to the rest of the world. If more than two or three colors are used, things tend to look a little messy, and the power of any one color is diluted too much, so we most often stick with two colors.
When I am not sure exactly which colors or combinations to use, I often start trying different things, then take a step back and ask myself what my chosen colors are conveying to me. After designing many websites over the years I have realized that going with my gut has often worked when I'm in doubt. You would be surprised at how creative and accurate your intuition can be.
However, if the client already has an established brand, we will always make sure to match the colors of the website with the original colors of the company. It is not wise to have print collateral material one color and the website a totally unrelated color. All marketing channels need to remain consistent, with one face only.
Since website visitors all have different platforms, different monitors, and different settings for their screen resolutions, the colors you choose for your website may not always be rendered the exact same way on your site visitors' monitors. That's why there are "Web Safe" colors that have a much higher likelihood of looking the exact same regardless of the user's computer, monitor or settings. Many graphics programs, including Adobe Photoshop, have a feature that allows you to choose "Web Safe" colors only.
Keep in mind however, that the sophistication of technology today allows for Web designers to be able to stray from the "Web Safe" colors more and more. So don't be overly concerned if you choose to use "un-safe" Web colors, chances are that most of your audience has the computers necessary to view your site the exact way you intended.
Whether you are designing sites for clients or designing your own business website, your color choice is vital. Be sure to try different colors, different shades, and different combinations before you decide. It's a lot of fun playing with colors but every choice you make comes with a set of pre-defined societal meanings and emotions, so choose with deliberate care.
About the Author
Jason OConnor owns and operates Oak Web Works, LLC - The synthesis of Web marketing, design, and technology. Jason is an expert at Web design, programming, e-strategy, and e-marketing. Call or email today for a free site consultation.
Web Design Company - http://www.oakwebworks.com/
Las Vegas, Broadway Show & Concert Tour Tickets
http://www.bestshowticketslasvegas.com/
Avoid Graphical Overload
By Ron King
When designing a website, it's easy to start loading it up with graphics. While tempting, you have to resist -- otherwise, you'll end up with graphical overload.
Why is that a bad thing? Here's why.
It Takes Too Long to Download
The first reason to cut down on graphics is that the more there are, and the larger they are, the longer it will take each of your pages to download. People are impatient when waiting for pages to download -- you only have around 5 seconds before your visitor hits the Back button.
What can you do about this? Apart from using fewer pictures, you can also make sure that you resize your images in a graphics editor. This actually makes their file sizes smaller. If you just resize images by specifying a width and height in HTML or CSS, they will still be slow to download because the full file size is being used.
You should consider turning on compression in your image editor. JPEG files can often be compressed by up to 25% before there's a noticeable difference in quality. Try different formats and compression levels to see what works.
It Gets Too Busy
If you use a site with more than 4 images on the page at once, your eyes are being pulled all over the page. They're not sure where to focus because the page simply has too much going on.
Look at the front pages of newspapers, and notice how they lead on 1 picture. Putting 2 pictures on a front page is considered to be poor: the reader doesn't know where to look.
That goes double for websites, where the viewable area is much smaller than a newspaper page. Even if you have more than 1 thing to say, it's better to 'go large' with 1 picture and then explain the other things in text, next to or below it.
It Distracts from the Content
Users visit your site to get information, not to look at your graphics. Too many graphics will distract from your content, or, worse, force readers to search for it. Any time your graphics get in the way of people readily using your site, you're suffering from graphical overload. And that is a bad thing.
What's the solution? Simply decide which of all those graphics are really necessary. Remember, don't add graphics just to look nice, each graphic must have a specific purpose.
An Exception: Photo Galleries
If the purpose of your site is photo presentation, then clearly multiple images are appropriate. However, don't just stick up several large photographs -- provide thumbnails: smaller versions of each image. If interested, the visitor can click on 1 to make it larger.
This fits more pictures on each page, and avoids wasting user download time and your bandwidth.
Keep in mind that in all web design, the images are there strictly to support the content. Even when the content is graphical.
About the Author
Visit http://www.webtopdesign.com to learn more. Ron King is a full-time researcher, writer, and web developer, visit his website at http://www.ronxking.com
Copyright 2005 Ron King. This article may be reprinted if the resource box is left intact and the links live.
|
|
