Little Pie Studio - Color Palettes - Are you feeling blue?

WHY COLOR?
Color is one of the most important visual considerations when designing a web site. Your color choices set the overall tone of your web site. Warm and inviting, cool and relaxing.... you really can set the stage for your site with the type of energy the color implies.

WHAT COLOR?
Some color choices seem easy.... grungy black and grey for a rock band, luscious red for online personals, natural greens for a nursery, and so on. But what about when it’s not so obvious? A little lesson in color theory will help you in the selection process. Here are some basic colors and the feelings they generate.

RED
passion
love
strength
energy
action

ORANGE
power
stimulation
fire
spice
warmth

YELLOW
cheerful happy sunny healthy optimistic

GREEN
fresh wealth nature relaxing growth

BLUE
clean tranquil trustworthy peaceful loyal

PURPLE
royalty mystery luxury wisdom creativity

BLACK
elegance formality authority mystery prestige

BROWN
wholesome dependable warmth honesty stability

WHITE
stark
clean simple pure
open

WHAT TYPE?
Once you have an idea of the feeling you want your site to convey, you will also want to consider the way we group colors together. Do you want your site to have lots of contrast? Do you want certain things to pop? Do you want the colors changes to be subtle and effortless? We can use color theory to help achieve the desired look. Here are some common ways of grouping colors together.

Monochromatic-a monochromatic color scheme uses a variation of light and saturation for a single color. This produces a soothing effect, especially with cooler colors such as the top row of blues and bottom row of greens used in these examples.

Analogous -an analogous color scheme is made up of colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel. For instance, red-orange-yellow or yellow-green-blue. Often, one color is used as the main color and the others are used to enrich the palette.

Complementary -a complementary color scheme consists of two colors that lie opposite each other on the color wheel. This includes red-green, orange-blue and yellow-purple. This type of color scheme allows us to add emphasis to the elements we want to pop.

MOOD BOARDS
One of the most effective ways to achieve the desired look for your web site is thru the use of mood boards. These are tools artists use to gather various elements in one place for the client to see how they work together. Mood boards are widely used by interior and fashion designers. In the area of web design, a mood board usually includes the designer’s proposed color palette, textures and typography. We can also introduce styles of images and graphics to give the client a sense of the cohesiveness of all proposed elements.

Here is an example page showing mood boards for an existing client and how the project ultimately came together.
Sample Mood Boards