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Basics on How to Use Color Together
Color psychology is complicated field of study and goes deep into the meaning of combining colors for a particular desired effect. We will broad brush some basics that may well enough for you to make good color choices for a web site with marketing in mind.
Monochromatic Color Scheme
This is the use of a single color in varying shades. This can be a clean and interesting look on a web site. It's soothing and pleasing to the eye especially in the blue or green hues.
Complimentary Color Scheme
This is using high contrast of color by selecting colors directly opposite from one another on the color wheel (such as pink and lime green). This puts a warm color with a cool color and is pleasing to the eye.
Triple Color Scheme
This scheme uses three colors equally spaced from each other around a color wheel. It's popular with web designers and allows for a harmonious color scheme.
You ARE that first flash of color seen on your web site it's important to remember that color is the first thing registered by a person who goes to your web site. If that is pleasing, they will read on -- if it's displeasing you may lose them in a nano second. So first select your background color and then select two other colors for your web site. Remember to keep in mind the meaning and harmony of colors.
Recommended reading on color:
Title: Living Colors: A Definitive Guide to Color Palettes Through the Ages
Author: Margaret Walch
Publisher: Chronicle Books (1995)
Comments: Spiral bound work book; shows 80 classic color schemes from art and design history.
Title: The Designers Guide to Color Combinations: 500+ Historic and Modern
Color Formulas in CMYK*
Author: Leslie Cabarga
Publisher: North Light Books (2003)
Comments: This author doesn't teach color theory or even provide a color wheel in this book; but the book does contain a large collection of color combinations that work together.
* Short for Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black, and pronounced as separate letters ("see-em-why-kay"). CMYK is a color model in which all colors are described as a mixture of these four process colors. CMYK is the standard color model used in offset printing for full-color. Because such printing uses inks of these four basic colors, it is often called four-color printing.
Thank you for reading our information about the psychology of color and colors uses in marketing and communications.
