Color choice is a critical part of design, especially on the web. The right color scheme can go a long way in making a site appealing and ultimately drawing new and repeat visitors. For those, like me, who can be color challenged check out kuler. This site from Adobe makes picking a color scheme easy. On the web you can choose your base color, the type of color scheme you are looking for such as monochromatic, triad, analogous, complimentary, shades, or custom, and kuler creates a color scheme for you on the spot. From there you can tweak and play around to your heart’s content. Kuler then provides you with all the specific color information you need to put your color scheme to work – HSV, RGB, CMYK, LAB, and HEX settings that represent your color choices. It is an amazingly easy and extremely powerful design tool that has already been added to my list of favorite sites. Another favorite is Seth Godin’s blog, where I learned about kuler. Thanks Seth. You still have the best site on the web.
So why would you care about kuler? I was thinking about how I might use it. The first thing that came to mind was to decorate my home. My wife and I are looking to repaint a large part of the interior of our home. We also have a number of rooms that just are not “there” yet. Kuler is the perfect tool for helping us get it right. Sure, we will probably resort to the good old fashioned paint swatch for the paint color we put on the wall, but then what. For us, the hard part is not the color of the wall, but rather the accent colors to go along with it. By entering the room color in as a base in kuler, I can then begin to put together numerous color schemes to fit the feel of each room until I get something I like- without having to piece together swatches or blindly guess as to “will this look good with that?”
Professionally, I can think of endless uses for this tool. Every brochure, presentation, web site, mailer, and marketing piece I design can benefit from using kuler. Again I can start with a base color, like the green we use at LUCRUM, and then quickly mock up multiple color schemes to create different feelings for pieces. This takes much of the guesswork out of the equation, and really streamlines the creative process.
I am interested to hear your thoughts on kuler (or color as a design element). Will you use this tool? How?
