The last two articles talked about colour wheels, colour spaces, colour harmony and how colours work together. Every product ought to be a reflection of the brand identity to which it is built for and this is why designers have to pay attention to the palettes chosen.
Color Palette
Color palette is simply a set of colours that work well while also creating a certain mood or a feeling. This helps the users understand the product’s identity as well as increase the user experience. This article is targeted toward helping you create a palette for your next UI design whilst being intentional about it.
“Choosing the Right Colors — Choosing the right colors requires a lot of creativity and experimentation. Bear in mind that color is very psychological and different color harmonies produce different effects. For example, analogous colors are similar in hue, creating a smooth transition from one color to the next. Complementary colors are opposite to each other on the color wheel, so they create a strong contrast. Monochromatic color schemes can be subtle and sophisticated.”- iPage
How to choose colours
- Colour Meaning: Colour is psychological and every colour has a meaning to it. This method deals with selecting a colour that aligns with the principles and values of a product and building an harmony(monologous, analogous, complementary, split complementary, etc. ) round that colour. You can check the previous article to understand what colour harmony is about. For example:
Blue is associated with Trust, Security and safety, Tech, Calmness and serenity, Good for health, dental, medical, science, government, legal, and utilities.
Green is popularly known for Health and nature, Calmness, peace, and relaxation, Fertility, Science, tourism, medicine, human resources, environment, and sustainability.
An example of this method is seen in the websites below where a monochromatic harmony of blue is used in the the dental website and the analogous harmony of orange for the issue tracker website
2. Real World Inspirations: I bet a lot of people have seen posts and articles on selecting colours from the real world. The most common example is Netflix where the colours in a cinema are usually red, white and black and those are the colours of Netflix or an Agric website having green and brown as theme colours.
3. Brand colours: A lot of brands already have their identity established and so, creating a website/product outside the already existing identity isn’t the best. In this situation, you just have to use the existing brand colours (which are usually seen in the logo) and build a product that utilizes the colours and adding a few other colours to complement the dominating colour(if the brand is monocoloured).
4. Free Palettes: Just like Design inspirations, palettes can be gotten online- For Instagram, Pinterest, Dribbble, Behance, Mobile apps like Just Palette, Pigments, Be Color, Live palettes as well as websites like Coolors, Visme, Canva, Create a website, Colrd.
