Monday, May 21, 2012

One of the most difficult things about being a designer… get ready to be tricked, because this is actually a fun thing… is settling on color. You may have noticed that my logo design is pretty much a rainbow. I'd like to chalk it up to my inventive spirit, but it's rooted in childhood indecision. I was the exasperating kid with no favourite colour (that's French for "favorite color"). So exasperating in fact, that I started picking some color, so that I wouldn't be so annoying. Purple for elementary, silver for middle and black for high school (note that two of these aren't really colors). During college I went with red and that hue-puppy is still following me to this day. Surprised when I don't choose the red shirt, china pattern or game token, friends gasp or at least comment. (HAHA! I chose blue! You can never predict what I will do. I am the spirit of adventure!).

Despite all the matching my industry does, I'm here to tell you that YOU DON'T HAVE TO CHOOSE. Sure, you need a basic palette for your fonts and logos so that people don't go abusing them, but please let your designer (I hope I'm talking about me) burst the bubble. We know how to do it smartly. A great way to add a splash of color to your website is to add an option for rotating headers. These are meant to catch the eye and should be different from your standard set of colors.

Standards are different than the same old. Here are some homepage headers I created for a website with blue and gray as the standard:






I wonder what the user's eye goes straight for?