How to Choose Colours for a Website

By Robert Mathew

When designing a web site, most of the web designers give attention to two major factors; the design, i.e. the graphics and logos of the site, and the content. However, colour too plays a very important part in the design of a website as it defines the mood and emotions of the visitor and reflects your identity and image branding.

Colour can be classified as a form of symbolism. This is why we often say a person is green with envy or perhaps red with anger. Colours play a great deal in affecting us psychologically and can thus stimulate our appetite and also suppress it. There are strong colours like red and orange, and peaceful colours like green and blue. So depending on the mood and scheme of the website, colours have to be chosen wisely.

Modern computers are capable of displaying millions of colours on the screen. However, web design is limited to only 216 colours as Mac computers and PC’s both use different colour palettes that are common to both. These 216 colours are considered to be ‘web safe’ meaning that the web site colours look fairly consistent on different computers, be it Mac or PC, different operating systems and even different browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla.

Choosing the correct colour scheme for your site can be selected from the various types of colour combinations there are. The monochromatic colour schemes use a single colour where different values of the chosen colour are used to create the feel of the different colours. These schemes are basically harmonious and peaceful as using a single colour creates unity and thus helps to create and tie things together. Visually appealing schemes created by using colours that are related, but not the same, are called analogous colour combinations. Examples of analogous colour schemes are a selection of blues and purples or of reds and oranges. While two colours can be used in an analogous colour scheme, one colour is usually used as the dominant colour in the website while the others are considered to be accents. Colours that are opposite are used for contrasting colour schemes that are complimentary and pleasing to the eye. For example, yellow and green and purple and pink can be considered as contrasting colours. Contrasting colour combinations needn’t be ones using startling and obvious colours as new combinations too are pleasing to the eye. However, there is a word of caution to be kept in mind while using contrasting colours in the website. Usually the eye has difficulty focusing on contrasting colours at the same time. So it is always better to use contrasting colours for your accents and to avoid using strong contrasts as background and type colours. Then there is the triadic colour combinations which are colour combinations with three opposing colours. Red, yellow and blue make a great triadic colour scheme. As in contrasting colour combinations, it is not advisable to use full strength and startling colour combinations in triadic colour combinations. Instead, using a more subdued value of one or more colours very much help in creating better readability for the site.

Colour is all around us, in nature, furnishings, cars, and in the hundreds of designs we see in the web and in print. When you happen to see a colour combination that thrills you, just jot it down and save it for the future as you may never know when you may need it for the colour scheme of your website!

Robert is a Freelance Website Designer and Search Engine Optimizer at http://www.digitallabz.com and http://www.webdesignerhouston.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robert_Mathew

Custom Website Design And Content Management Systems

By David Rutstein

A custom web design is only the first part of creating a website.

If you want your website to succeed (read: profitable), you have to keep it updated. But site owners know all too well it can be difficult to update especially you neither have the budget for a designer, nor the skill for HTML and other programming languages. If you have neither the budget nor the skill, you can always turn toward incorporating Content Management Systems or CMS on your website.

There are two types of CMS available: one created by your web designer and the other a ready-to-use system that you can customize to your needs. Most business, especially the small to business owners, prefer the latter to keep web development costs low. It's fairly ease to use too.

Customizing Ready-To-Use CMS

Once you've got a ready-to-use system incorporated in your custom website design, you can edit your website pages as if it were only a word document. Here are some website elements that need to be customized in a ready-to-use CMS system:

·Look and Feel

One disadvantage of a ready CMS doesn't allow for a unique display of graphics. Most of existing CMS systems are restricted in color schemes and layouts that you can only remedy by adding a custom header and footer.

· Navigation and Link Structure

You don't have to put your entire system on CMS. Although it doesn't really make much sense, you can just have your site's home page on CMS and have the rest updated by your developer. In any case, you must have the link structure and navigation of your CMS customized according to your link structure. This means that whatever navigation buttons you have on your other pages must also be in your CMS-managed pages.

How CMS works

A CMS system is ideal for pages that need regular updating. Anyone can practically manage a website using only a CMS system. Updating a website can be as simple as editing uploading new word files (or copy-pasting text) or uploading a new photo.

HTML or WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor are the most preferred. Before buying any ready and customizable CMS, check what modules are available for updating, and which are most useful to you. Some Content Management Systems also come with a newsletter management system, a shopping cart system, user tracking system, advertising tracking system, among others.

In all, with a proper planning and execution, a Content Management System make it easier for you to update your custom web design.

David Rutstein has years of experience in creating SEO-friendly and affordable custom web design. For a free quote on his services, contact him through his website http://www.webdesignoffice.us/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Rutstein

What Colour Combination Should You Use In Your Website And How It Will Help Your Visitors In The Long Run

By: John Teh

To some people, the more colourful it is the merrier it is. However, in a more general definition of a well balanced website appearance, it is not always the case. Words such as nice, wow or beautiful can be very subjective when it comes to evaluating the appearance of a particular website. For some, a colourful, flashy and bright website can be appealing while a darker theme could be better for others. So the main question now is - how do you go about choosing the right colours for your website?

The biggest and most widely practised concept of web colour implementation is the RYB approach. Being the main three colours, Red (R), Yellow (Y) and Blue (B), hence RYB, these 3 colours are known to have a great impact on how web visitors react and interpret messages on your webpages. You'll realize that most of the links on the web are underlined in a default blue. Error messages are usually in red. Yellow provides a nice light addition which compliments dark backgrounds really well. Orange (red + yellow) texts for example is extremely popular with black backgrounds. Try it and you know why. Take a look at www.microsoft.com for example. It has an excellent application of the primary and secondary colours together with the support of black and white. Apply this technique to your web designs and you'll improve the overall layout appearance significantly, if not greatly.

Different classification of websites require different approach. In most cases, you don't want to have a corporate website with a black or any extremely dark background. Apparently a white background seems to signify formality and a certain level of layout cleanliness. Not that a dark background can't have a clean cut look, it is just a typical mental translation of human observation that the colour white is in fact the cleaner one or simply easier on the eyes. Black background in the other hand, frequently portrays something which is fancy, elegant, playful yet has a reasonable level of seriousness in it.

A majority of designers or rather webpage creators believe the role of emphasization by utilizing light and dark colours. For example, a dark background combined with a light content area, simply attracts visitors to emphasize more in the middle, which happens to be the content area. It simple works too if you have a light coloured background with a dark content area. Alternatively you can add patterns or images into the background to spice things up. Just don't get these additional items to change the original apperance of your colours. The only issue with background with exceptionally large images is that it might kill some of the attention that you want your visitors to have on your main content.

There's nothing wrong with having a website with either a light or dark background, provided that it looks good, and of course if it is nicely presented together with a readable content with a friendly user interface. How do you know if it looks good is simply something that can't be measured by words, but rather by simply looking at it. If you look at it and by some spontaneous self agreement, that you think the colour fits perfectly with everything else, then you've hit the big jackpot. If it works otherwise, and you just feel like there's something wrong, play around with the colours till you have that comforting feeling that you've done a great job.

You might be thinking right now, which colour goes with which colour? You can either browse all over the net, looking at websites and noting down good combination of colours as you go or you can simply go to http://www.colormatch.dk. This website is extremely simple and easy to use, yet very powerful in terms of features. Simple and straightforward, you simply choose one dominant colour for your website and it'll simply chooses for you 6 other colours which compliments your main colour, together with the colour codes. Simple as 1-2-3. Note that colormatch.dk only works in Internet Explorer browsers. Try googling for colormatch and get enhanced and modified versions of the original.

Additionally, always try not to get your website too dark or too bright. You can use either one or both of them at the same time, but not too excessively, and try to find a supporting colour which compliments or enhances your initial choice. Try to balance up usage of colour tones all over your website too. If you think that the upper right of your website is too bright compared to the rest of your page, then either you reduce the brightness to equal the overall layout or simply brighten up the rest of the website, in a controlled manner of course. If you're adventurous, replicate that bright top right area to the bottom right area, making the right area somewhat a "bright coloured zone". The key point here is to maintain the balance of your colour usage. You don't want to drive a car with one of the door being slightly and yet obviously darker or lighter.

Lastly but not least, try to limit the number of colours to a reasonable amount. 2 to 4 are good amount of colours, not counting black and white. Black and white are just simply too important to not to be used. If you really need to use extra colours, try to use a darker or lighter version of your main colours. If your main colour is red, wine red, crimson or even maroon are good alternatives. Even certain tone of brown could actually look like red sometimes. Try to "recolour" your graphics or get some graphics which tally with your overall selection of colours.

Another good concept to follow is to apply a colour scheme according to your logo. If you logo has orange and black for example, try to enhance that colour by applying those same colours as well as the same colours with different tones throughout your whole website. Some designers even select their colours based on the pre selected images they have for their website. Certain images are just tend to be too exceptionally perfect to be omitted, thus explaining such occurrences.

I hope this guide will help you to get your colours right and have a better understanding of what to choose and what not to do in any of your future web design works. Nevertheless, try not to limit your creativity and imagination based solely on this article. Get your ideas flowing and experiment with your ideas constantly. Good luck!

About the Author:

John Teh is a full time web designer and developer, who also operates a web template database website at http://www.dead0eye.com.

Article Tags: colour, colours, website

Read more articles by: John Teh
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Privacy Policy for Wbsite Color Mixing

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