Week 8 Page 4: Selecting an Appropriate Color Scheme

 

What's an Appropriate Color Scheme?

Selecting an appropriate color scheme is quite an art. Colors are powerful communicators of emotion and mood. Some colors suit specific topics better than others (warm vs. cool or sophisticated vs. loud palettes). They can also convey a time period (think of the 60s colors).

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Color and mood

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What mood does the colors used at this site create? Does the color scheme instantly tell you something about the type of music the group plays?

How about this site? What do the colors communicate about this music (and perhaps about the target audience!)? Brace yourself... this is very bright!

Clearly the colors are chosen to communicate a visual message about the musician's style of music or vibe.

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Color and topic

What do you think about these colors for a dentist? Do the colors communicate "modern" or "too lively" (or perhaps bad sense of color)?
Here's a link to the archived site: https://web.archive.org/web/20070311021905/http://www.atkinsdentistry.com/ Links to an external site.

color dentist inappropriate

Compare it to the current site (perhaps they had a change of heart about the color choices)?
http://www.atkinsdentistry.com/ Links to an external site. 

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Color and culture

Colors also have symbolic and cultural significance. For example, red is for danger, dynamism and heat, blue for calm, harmony and cool, etc. Some cultures have different color associations from Western countries, for example, white is the color of mourning in some Asian countries.

For some light relief, try this quiz:

Do you agree with their answers?

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Color and fashion

You shouldn't overlook the importance of fashion and trend in your choice of colors. Some colors are "the color of the moment" and will appear outdated very quickly. For this year's color trends, check out this web site!

Here's the Pantone color of 2018... Ultra Violet!

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Color blindness

Lastly, remember that some of your site visitors might have a color vision deficiency of some kind. Read this article for more information:

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