1. Atlanta web design : Part I
Color Theory - Choosing Your Website Colors
Is the choice of colors for your website and print materials more than just a matter of personal
preference? Does it really matter what color choices you make? Will your audience really feel differently
because of the color combinations? The answer to all these questions is Yes, Yes, and Yes!
Color is considered emotional, because variations evoke different emotions in people. We all know that
green is the color of money, but did you also know that green can symbolize greed, envy, and jealousy?
The colors you choose will have a direct effect on how the public perceives your company or product.
This can be complicated by the fact that our use of color on the web is now limitless: technology allows
us to create millions of color combinations. So how do you choose? This brief article will make it simple
to understand the basics of choosing colors.
It’s important to understand that every color has a positive and negative set of emotions associated with
it, what I call the “color meaning”. It’s this meaning that will affect your customer’s emotional response
to your company, brand or product. So when choosing color schemes for your website, or any other
media type, you need to make sure you’re presenting your company or product with a color that will
most likely entice the audience to choose your company or product.
Take a quick break, and go look in your lunch room, refrigerator, or kitchen cabinets at the products we
purchase from the grocery store. What color do you see the most of? Chances are, you’re seeing red,
and lots of it. Just glimpsing into my cabinets, now that I know I’m looking for it, I seem to be thrown in
to a world of red products. Chef Boyardee, Kellogg’s, Lipton, Carnation, Ragu, Aunt Jemima, Nestle,
Betty Crocker, Orville Redenbacher’s, Heinz, Pam, all of these brands are jumping out at me with red in
their labels. Why? Red is a very “hot” color, and very emotional as well. In studies, red actually has a
physical effect on people, increasing their heart rate and causing blood pressure to rise. Red grabs our
attention, stirs us to action, and thus is a very powerful color for product packaging.
All colors fit into three categories; cool, warm and neutral. While you can select all of your colors from
the same category, it is often possible to achieve a more powerful effect by introducing a color from one
of the other groups. Let’s take a look now at how colors work together, and what each color may mean
to the viewer.
2. Cool Colors
Blue, green, purple, turquoise and silver are cool colors. Cool colors tend to have a calming effect on the
viewer. Used alone however, these colors can have a cold or impersonal feel, so when choosing cool
colors, it may be wise to add a color from another group to avoid this.
Blue Color Meaning.
Positive: tranquility, love, loyalty, security, trust, intelligence
Negative: coldness, fear, masculinity
Green Color Meaning.
Positive: money, growth, fertility, freshness, healing
Negative: envy, jealousy, guilt, disorder
Purple Color Meaning. (purple is a combination of blue and red, so it is found in both the warm and cool
categories)
Positive: royalty, nobility, spirituality, luxury, ambition
Negative: mystery, moodiness
Turquoise Color Meaning.
Positive: spiritual, healing, protection, sophisticated
Negative: envy, femininity
Silver Color Meaning.
Positive: glamorous, high tech, graceful, sleek
Negative: dreamer, insincere
3. Warm Colors
Red, pink, yellow, orange, purple, and gold are warm colors. Warm colors tend to have an exciting effect
on the viewer. However when these colors are used alone they can over-stimulate, generating emotions
of anger and violence. When choosing warm tones, adding colors from another group will help to
balance this.
Red Color Meaning.
Positive: love, energy, power, strength, passion, heat
Negative: anger, danger, warning, impatience
Pink Color Meaning.
Positive: healthy, happy, feminine, compassion, sweet, playful
Negative: weakness, femininity, immaturity
Yellow Color Meaning.
Positive: bright, energy, sun, creativity, intellect, happy
Negative: coward, irresponsible, unstable
Orange Color Meaning.
Positive: courage, confidence, warmth, friendliness, success
Negative: ignorance, sluggishness, superiority
Purple Color Meaning. (purple is found in both warm and cool colors)
Positive: royalty, nobility, spirituality, luxury, ambition
Negative: mystery, moodiness
Gold Color Meaning.
4. Positive: wealth, prosperity, valuable, traditional
Negative: greed, dreamer
Neutral Colors
Brown, tan, ivory, gray, black and white are neutral colors. Neutral colors are a great selection to mix
with a cool or warm palette. They are good for backgrounds in a design, and also tend to tone down the
use of other more overpowering colors. Black is added to create a darker “shade” of a primary color,
while white is added to create a lighter “tint”.
Black Color Meaning.
Positive: protection, dramatic, serious, classy, formality
Negative: secrecy, death, evil, mystery
Gray Color Meaning.
Positive: security, reliability, intelligence, solid, conservative
Negative: gloomy, sad, conservative
Brown Color Meaning.
Positive: friendly, earth, outdoors, longevity, conservative
Negative: dogmatic, conservative
Tan (beige) Color Meaning.
Positive: dependable, flexible, crisp, conservative
Negative: dull, boring, conservative
Ivory Color Meaning.
Positive: quiet, pleasantness, pureness, warmness
Negative: weak, unstable
5. White Color Meaning.
Positive: goodness, innocence, purity, fresh, easy, clean
Negative: winter, cold, distant
You may be asking, “What is the right color combination for my business website?” While there is no
absolute “right” color for your website, you need to understand your target audience, and consider their
response to colors, not your own. If your end goal is for them to choose your company or product, then
your color palette must appeal to them. There are overall factors that indicate what your audience may
or may not like.
The basic target audience factors to consider are age differences, class differences, gender differences
and overall color trends.
Age difference is a key factor that should not be ignored. If children and adolescents are your target
audience, then they prefer bright, primary colors like red, blue, green and yellow. However, if your
target is older adults, they would prefer more muted or darker colors, along with colors from the neutral
color group.
Class difference is another key factor in choosing colors. United States research has shown those in the
working class prefer colors they can name like blue, red, green, etc. Those that are more educated tend
to prefer more obscure colors like taupe, azure, celadon, salmon, etc.
Gender preference is an obvious factor in choosing your colors. Men tend to prefer cool tones like blues
and greens, where women prefer warmer tones, reds and oranges. If you have an audience of both men
and women, consider mixing some colors from the warm and cool palettes that would appeal to both
men and women.
Last but not least are color trends. By definition, a trend means “current style”. Choosing currently
popular colors may work well for some types of websites and products, but if you want to present
longevity and stability, then popular colors may not be the best direction for you. Instead, you may want
to consider more traditional colors that stand up over time.
6. Choosing color is more than just picking what feels good to you, it is about creating a response from the
viewer. By knowing your target audience and the effect that different colors can have, you gain a greater
ability to determine what colors will work best for your audience.
One final note on color. Viewers on the web can use different monitors, different browsers, and
different operating systems. It is nearly impossible to ensure that your colors come across the same on
every computer as well as in print. Don’t be overly concerned with the differences on varying
computers, but do try to be consistent. Whether you’re creating a color palette for your company, a
brand identity, or product colors, consistency is key. Use the same colors throughout all your marketing
efforts to create familiarity with your company or product. Consistency will help instill trust with your
viewer.
Hiring a web designer to come up with the custom solution that you need can set you back a few
thousand bucks. But you can do the whole thing yourself and make it drag and drop simple for mere
pennies with a tool like Breezy Websites. See http://breezywebsites.com for details!
Atlanta web design : End of Part I
ColorImpact: Create Beautiful Color Schemes For Your Website With A Single Click!
ColorImpact is an award winning software for creating harmonious color schemes. The program is based
on the color wheel used by artists for centuries. The artist's use of complementary colors, or colors
opposite on the color wheel, creates an exciting painting.
There are a lot of great tools in ColorImpact, such as Matching Colors Wheel, Color Variations, Color
Blender and Test Patterns. The Main Menu area is like a control center for this program and lets you
explore the color tools.
7. The color tools let you adjust colors in the palette in order to better suit your needs. For example, the
Color Variations panel lets you add and modify variations to the colors in the color palette, while the
Color Blender gives you the power to create intermediary colors between any two end colors.
But the most useful tool for <b>niche website builders</b> is the Color Composer, that allows you to
experiment and see how your color schemes look when used on real web page designs.
<b>Color Composer</b>
The Color Composer is an advanced color scheme designer for web pages. The flexible user interface
allows you to combine one of several html templates with a number of predefined and user defined
color formulas or preselected colors.
Want a quick set of pleasantly looking and harmonious colors for your new website? Simply launch the
Color Composer and pick a Formula Base Color. The base color window pops up. It is a flexible color
picker that gives you full control when selecting the base color.
Pick the base color, and the Composer will instantly give you color suggestions for the following main
elements of a webpage:
* Page Header: Background, Logo and Top Bar
* Sidebar: Background, Heading, Heading Background, Menu Item and Menu Item Background
* Content: Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, Text, Background
* Links
Play with it! Pick colors from the Base Color circle and see how good the Composer is in selecting the
best matches for webpage elements. When you're done, click File > Export Colors… and save you color
scheme as a CSS file.
8. <b>Creating a color scheme for your website has never been this easy!</b>
Note: This review intentionally refers to an older version of the ColorImpact, known as ColorImpact
Classic. Although, ColorImpact version 3 is available, in my opinion, the Color Composer in the Classic
version is easier to use and more intuitive. Moreover, the ColorImpact Classic costs $20 less.
15-day trials are available for both versions of the program. The trials have no features disabled, so you
can take advantage of them all while testing it. ColorImpact has a well organized and intuitive user
interface and an extensive help documentation.
ColorImpact website: http://www.tigercolor.com/
Hiring a web designer to come up with the custom solution that you need can set you back a few
thousand bucks. But you can do the whole thing yourself and make it drag and drop simple for mere
pennies with a tool like Breezy Websites. See http://breezywebsites.com for details!
Atlanta web design : End of Part II
Common Mistakes: Functional Web Specification
Ineffective functional specification for Web projects such as Web sites, Intranets or Portals contribute
largely to delays, higher costs or in applications that do not match the expectations. Independent if the
Web site, Intranet or Portal is custom developed or built on packaged software such as Web-, enterprise
content management or portal software, the functional specification sets the foundation for project
delays and higher costs. To limit delays and unexpected investments during the development process,
the following pitfalls should be avoided:
<b>Too vague or incomplete functional specification:</b> This is the most common mistake that
companies do. Everything that is ambiguously or not specified at all, developers do not implement or
implement in a different way of what site owners want. This relates primarily to Web features that are
considered as common user expectations. For example, HTML title tags, which are used to bookmark
Web pages. The Web steering committee may specify that each page contains a page title, but does not
specify that HTML Title tags needs to be implemented as well. Web developers therefore may do not
9. implement HTML Title tags or implement them in a way, which differs from site owners' visions. There
are other examples such as error handling on online forms or the definition of ALT texts for images to
comply with the disability act section 508. These examples look like details but in practice, if developers
need to modify hundreds or even thousands of pages, it amounts to several man-days or even man-
weeks. Especially, the corrections for images as business owners need first to define the image names
prior that Web developers can implement the ATL texts. Ambiguous functional specification can result
due to the lack of internal or external missing usability skills. In this case, a one-day usability best
practice workshop transfers the necessary or at least basic usability skills to the Web team. It is
recommended, even for companies that have usability skills or rely on the subcontractor's skill set, that
an external and neutral consultant reviews the functional specification. Especially, as such reviews relate
to marginal spending as compared to the total Web investments (e.g. about $10 K - $15 K dollars for a
review).
<b>Future site enhancement not identified or not communicated:</b> It is crucial that the Web
committee identifies at least the major future site enhancements and communicates them to the
development team. In the best case, the development team knows the roadmap for the coming three
years. Such an approach allows the development team to anticipate implementation choices to host
future site enhancements. It is more cost effective on mid- or long-term to invest more in the beginning
and to build a flexible solution. If Web teams do not know or even ignore future enhancements, the risk
for higher investment increases (e.g. adding new functionality in the future results in partially or at
worst in totally rebuilding existing functionality). Looking at the financial delta for a flexible solution
versus a solution just satisfying the current requirements, the flexible solution has proven to be more
cost-effective in practice from a mid- and long-term perspective. </p>
<b>Planned functionality not aligned with internal resources:</b> Many companies look at site
functionality only from a site visitor perspective (e.g. facilitation of searching information or performing
transaction) and corporate benefits (e.g. financial benefits of self-service features). However, there is a
third dimension the impact of site functionality on internal resources. Site functionality that can heavily
impact internal resources are for example:
- Web sites: providing news, online recruitment, online support, etc.
- Intranets / portals: providing content maintenance functionality for business managers
It is crucial for the success of site functionality that the Web committee analyzes the impact and takes
actions to ensure operations of the planned functionality. For example, providing the content
maintenance functionality to business owners and product mangers with an associated workflow. This
10. functionality is effective and can generate business benefits such as reduced time to market. However,
in practice, business owners and product managers will need to write, validate, review, approve and
retire content. This results in additional workload. If the Web committee has not defined in the Web
governance (processes, policies, ownership and potentially enforcement), it may happen that this
functionality is not used and hence becomes useless.
<b>Wish lists versus actual needs and business requirements:</b> The functional specification is not
aligned with user's needs or business requirements. This is more common for internal applications such
as Intranets or portals. In many cases, the project committee neglects to perform a sound internal
survey and defines functionality by generalizing individual employees' wishes without any sound proves.
Capturing the feedback of internal users across the organization allows determining the critical
functionality. To effectively perform a survey a representative set of employees need to be questioned.
Further these employees need to be categorized into profiles. The profiles need to be characterized by
for example, frequency of usage of the Intranet, estimated duration by visit, usage of the Intranet to
facilitate their daily tasks, contribution to the business, etc. Based on this information the Web team can
then prioritize the functionality and choose the most effective and relevant functionality for the next
release. Less critical or less important functionality may be part of future releases (roadmap) or
dropped. If such a sound decision process is not performed, it may happen that functionality is
developed but only used by few users and the return of investment is not achieved.
<b>Not enough visual supports or purely text based:</b> Textual description of Web applications can be
interpreted subjectively and hence leading to wrong expectations. To avoid setting wrong expectations,
which may are only discovered during development or at worst at launch time, functional specification
need to be complemented by visual supports (e.g. screenshots or at best HTML prototypes for home
pages or any major navigation pages like sub-home pages for the major sections of the site such as for
human resources, business units, finance, etc.). This allows reducing subjective interpretation and taking
into account the users' feedback prior development. Such an approach helps setting the right
expectations and to avoid any disappointments at the end once the new application is online.</p>
We have observed these common mistakes, independently if companies have developed their Web
applications internally or subcontracted them to an external service provider.
Hiring a web designer to come up with the custom solution that you need can set you back a few
thousand bucks. But you can do the whole thing yourself and make it drag and drop simple for mere
pennies with a tool like Breezy Websites. See http://breezywebsites.com for details!
