My latest endeavour has been one of great trial and error; the kind of test of patience that would make Elmo look like he'd be fully qualified to do my job, given the amount of effort it looks like I've been putting into it today. Of course, Elmo is a fuzzy red guy -- and everyone knows that Grover could totally kick his furry red booty from one side of Sesame Street to the other -- but enough about me and my childhood obsessions. Today's project involves the re-re-start of a project that Mindfly has been working on for some time. It's been a lot of back and forth, some set ideas and flexible ideas, lots of communication, and the bane of every project I ever begin:
I'm talking about colors.
As a designer -- I use this term with an extremely light touch, you understand, as I prefer the catch-all "I make websites" tag -- I very rarely start a project with colors fresh in my head. In a lot of ways, finding the right color palette can be every bit as difficult as any other part of making a website. Not only does your color scheme have to reflect what the company/product/message of the site is all about, it has to do so in a way that doesn't compromise the viewer's ability to do so without risking retinal damage. It has to be readable, accessible. It has to send a message all by itself: "I'm professional!" ... "I'm fun and friendly!" ... "I'm fun, friendly and professional!" ... "I'm a serial killer!" ... "I'm an emo artist rock band and I kick babies!" ... and so forth. (Note for the Lawyers: Mindfly has not knowingly ever contracted with serial killers. Or emo rock bands. Mindfly would not actually consider contracting with serial killers, but emo rock bands could potentially become very famous. And no baby-kicking.)
While some designers may start a project with a very clear idea of what colors to use, I'm not one of them. My palettes have to be inspired, thrown around for a while in the hamster wheel that is my brain by midday and left to spin-dry. I throw around a lot of adjectives during meetings, listening to pick up on key words like "fun" and "funky" or "quiet" or "mellow". I listen for what kind of verbal imagery inspires the client -- or myself, for that matter -- and surf around the 'net or the real world looking for visual inspiration. On this particular project, "fun" and "friendly" are keywords. Inspired by tropical flavors, salsa-type visuals, the electric shimmy of tango and frilly flamenco dresses and high energy motion.
And it's not even a dance website!
And that's the beauty of color palettes. Andy Clarke -- whom I have not fawned over in a blog post for a while (I'mnotastalker!) -- wrote a bit about inspiration and the creation process when making a web site. He says:
"It’s always helpful to look outside of the web for your inspiration, to
places where you might not at first expect to find a solution. The world is a
collage of inspiration, from newspapers, magazine publishing, and advertising to
product design, architecture and the fine arts."
He further goes on to talk about how important it is for designers to collect various bits and bobs and visually inspiring knick-knacks; to look at everything from the side of your breakfast cereal at Unholy-Morning o'clock to tearing out swatches of magazine and print art pages that cause you to take a moment and double-take. On this particular Peachpit article, he explains how to make gradient variations from a single base color, and shows examples of various base colors he started with.
All of this goes on for some time, and aside from the fact that I apparently enjoy reading his articles repeatedly (notastalker!), I feel that the article justifies the niggling voice in my head that says it really isn't wasteful to go out and get a notebook to then fill with random crap that might inspire me. To use the project at hand, I'd have any number of flamenco beauties pasted between the pages, swatches of material, even screenshots of big, friendly icons that are starting to (have started? continue to?) be pasted all over the web. From wild photos of crazy sunsets to minimalist, stark sketches of lots of white space and print.
The end result isn't always perfect. Case in point, my first color scheme was loved by exactly one half of the relevant critics, and vetoed by the other half. Too bright, too hard on the eyes, too too. Just perfect, argued the other side, exactly the fun and fresh look, very tropical, very very. All right, sez I, contemplating this over a nice long walk in the gorgeous autumn sun and inhaling the friendly harbor air over the water. How to find the happy medium between "too too" and not enough?
After a couple more hours of futzing, tweaking, combing, and sighing, I came up with a palette that isn't perfect by any stretch, but appears to be much more workable in the long run. The colors are still bright, but more muted than they were, saturated without threatening anybody's retinas. The feel is still fun, friendly, dynamic, but the layout maintains a professional something-something that says, "Yes, we're awesome, but do take us seriously."
I am happy to say that while bilious orange may, in some way, be involved, cosmo-vomit green is nowhere to be seen.
I'd be curious to know how anyone else out there goes around deciding on color palettes of choice. How do you do it? Do you use swatches? Do you just do it random? Do you have a sketch book or scrap book? Or are you too fast for organization, a rebel without a structure? Sound off!
