Choosing a color palette before you start designing is important, but knowing how to build a successful color palette can be a challenge. Knowing the psychology behind certain colors, color theory, and identifying current color palette trends are very useful. This presentation also covers extra tips and tricks to build your own color palette.

1. Color Palettes

2. + Color Profiling
+ Color Theory Overview
+ Palette Trends for Themes
+ Methods, Tools, and Tips

3. That’s Racist
Color Profiling
Historic and Psychological Traits

4. Sea Foam Green
retro, hip
popular in the 60‘s-70’s

5. Purple
royalty, wealth - expensive ink
fantasy, mystery

6. Yellow
curiosity, playfulness
cheerfulness, amusement

7. Brown
warm substitute for black
Monet borrowed for Impressionist
paintings

8. Blue
professionalism, trust-worthiness
calm, power

9. Red
passion, warmth
warning, danger
great accent color

10. Pink
UNDERWEAR!!!!!
accent color

11. Green
nature, harmony, health
money
*the human eye can detect more shades of green than any other color -
night vision goggles

12. White
simplicity, purity

13. + Your client may hate a color. Find out
what it is before you design.
+ Like a color? Persuade with good reason,
not just because you like it.

14. + Many designers choose colors based on intuition;
others choose colors based on color theory.
You may be surprised to find both ways may end up
with similar results.

15. Primary Colors
can be divided into 2 different types:
+ Additive - Subtractive
obtained by light obtained by the subtraction of light
red (R), green (G), blue (B) cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y)
combine to form white combine to form black (K)
ex: TV, computer screens ex: ‘four’ color printing

16. Color Wheel
+ Primary Colors + Secondary Colors + Tertiary Colors

17. Color Wheel Selections
+ Complementary Colors
+ opposing each other on the color wheel
+ sometimes they look horrible together
+ sometimes they are used as highlight colors to
create vibrancy, great for CTA’s.

18. Color Wheel Selections
+ Analogous Colors
+ adjacent to on the color wheel
+ spice up monochromatic palettes
+ very powerful in conveying moods
+ use one hue as the main color

19. Color Wheel Selections
+ Triads
+ 3 colors equidistant on the color wheel
+ they provide tension
+ their strengths are relatively equal, good for
branding sections of equal-weight information

20. + So where do I start?

21. + Determine the Theme
Corporate
Education
Foodies (organic)
Fashion
Historic / Nostalgic
Modern / Minimalistic
Photography
Retro / Vintage
Technology

22. + Technology
Base - Subordinate / weak color
Main - Brand color
Accent Color - can be something’s
that sympathetic to the base or main,
or a complementary / triad color that
creates tension.

23. + Fashion / Photography

24. + Nostalgic / Warm

25. + Foodie (Mexican Spicy Candy)

26. + Retro / Vintage

27. + Featured Photographs

28. + Existing Logo / Brand

29. + Tools & Tips
Have the palette ready before you start designing
ColourLovers.com
(search keywords; select several palettes and narrow it down as you design)
kuler.adobe.com
Dribbble.com
things.yorb.net/2/

30. + Accessibility
Do a greyscale test to make sure your design does not rely on color
for functions & meanings.
http://24ways.org/2010/calculating-color-contrast
Scripts help to calculate whether you should be using black or white text
on different background colors for the best contrast.
Brian Suda created some color-blindness-friendly palettes.
May the force be with you when you try to make this work.

31. Thanks for Coming!
And special thanks to our sponsors:

32. Social Love
Crop
http://www.meetup.com/designcrop/
Twitter: Crop_meetup
Host
Atlantic BT / twitter: @atlanticbt / http://www.atlanticbt.com
Co-Organizer
Eileen Allen / twitter: @eileenallen / dribbble: eileenallen
Co-Organizer
Corey Brinkmann / twitter: @cbrinkmann / dribbble: cbrinkmann
Speaker
Nancy Jin / dribbble: nancyjin
Wray
Kudos
Helen Shaffer / Mark Riggan / Matt Nolting / Todd Synan / Dave Dekker / Mitch Shepherd
Teresa Thomas / Matt Lemke / Kerensa Helle / Addie Caulk