Do Good Design

Colour inspiration is often the easiest when I go straight to Mother Nature.

When I start a web project, one of the first steps after the critical Planning stage is to create the colour scheme. Depending on the message my client is trying to send, I’ll think about what colours would be the most appropriate according to colour psychology.

But the exact shades and combinations often take their cue from a photo I’ve taken of a plant or landscape. The colours often turn out better, more delicate, than when I just come up with them on my own.

This morning when my husband Malcolm presented me with these sprigs of elderberries, I made sure to take a few photos for my collection, in case I need it in the future. The contrast between the deep plums and muted magenta against the grass and pea greens was too good to pass up.

So how do you apply this to a web design?

pulling colour from a photo

I love to use Colorschemer, an application that makes working with color in web and print design easy-peasy. It’s the best $50 I ever spent and I use it every time I need to create a colour scheme.

In this case, Colorschemer samples colours from my photo, and I can move the selectors around to choose different colours. I moved them until I got a nice mix of predominantly plums with an accent of green, similar to the proportions of the actual plant.

In the background, one of the colours show up on the colour wheel in case I need some other colours to go with what I’ve selected. There are also the hex numbers for each swatch, and I can later import this colour palette into Photoshop.

Even the muted ivory of the wool in the background could be good inspiration.

I could sample that colour as my background colour for page text, since I try to use neutral colours as much as possible for long areas of text. According to Edward Tufte, god of information design, muted neutral colours are easier on the eyes than rich colours, or even white.

Creating the web page

What could these colours look like on a sample web page?

Here I’ve taken an old sample home page I designed and applied my new colour scheme. While I wouldn’t generally use these colours for a dentist, you get the idea.

The colours here combine subtly and perfectly, just as they do in nature.

So next time you’re in search of a good colour scheme, take a photo of a plant or natural scene that grabs you and you’ll have the basis of something elegant and beautiful.