12 Jul 10 Color Scheme Strategies For Making An Impact
When designing a website, most of us pay a great deal of attention to the quality of our content. It’s essential that we craft our message very artfully so that we can convey the more crucial elements in as small a space as possible. We know that surfers are very busy people and tend to flit around from site to site with only a few seconds available for each page.
Psychologists often say that the first impression is absolutely crucial and that the initial reaction can usually mean the difference between holding someone’s attention so they investigate further - or losing them, so they simply continue on their journey. This shows us that while we should really focus on the overall quality of our written content, the actual design and appearance of the website is crucial too. Choosing the correct colors for your website can be more than just an arbitrary decision, or the use of a particular shade because it happens to be “your favorite color.”
Sometimes you will find that you are steered in a certain direction due to the very nature of your site, the product or service that you may be offering, or the very reason for its construction in the first place. While this may mean that you are leaning toward primary colors, pastel colors, stark blacks or whites, you nevertheless need to ensure that you have a balance between your colors and shades – in other words focus on a color scheme.
While fundamentally a color scheme must always be pleasing on the eye, unless the very reason for your website is to provoke and annoy, there are nevertheless many different ways to achieve a desired result. For example, if you happen to be working with a client who has a set of preselected colors, you could always suggest different tones and complementary shades that blend in strategically.
If you have a clean sheet of paper and are looking for some inspiration, there are numerous resources on the Web available to you. Several sites allow you to select different palettes or to view those that others have created before you. The power and creativity of these programs allow us to instantly see whether something looks pleasing to us or could “work” for a particular environment or site. Design programs work with a mixture of Pantone colors or hex codes and there are really an almost infinite number of variations available.
If you find that you need to turn to other sources for inspiration and discover a particularly interesting scheme through a random photograph, there are several different online tools that can help you to determine the actual code of the color that you like, also known as its hex value. In addition, design programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Photo Paint can “sample” the color from a photograph or a scan and replicate it perfectly.
When you are surfing the web yourself, you may come across a website that you particularly like. The color scheme may be very attractive to you and you might be wondering what colors are represented. You guessed it – you can turn to a website that allows you to enter a particular URL and return the color value that is used.
Adam Toren, Co-Founder of Young Entrepreneur, specializes in maximising the profitability of failing businesses with his own unique ‘bottom line’ method. Adam, along with his brother, have established, bought and then sold on an assortment of companies in recent years. At present, they own and operate a very successful publishing company and variety of online businesses.
