[thelist] Re: site building

[Chris Kaminski]

Thus spake Techwatcher:

> If nothing else, go play with a color selector, and then use the
> default "tabbed magazine" sort of design every other Web site seems to
> use these days. If you don't know anything about color, google for a
> nice tutorial. (Contrary to popular opinion, this is not stuff ruled by
> opinion -- colors DO have specific physiological effects.)

Well...yes, BUT those effects are highly subjective and entirely culturally
dependant. For example, in the U.S. white is the color of marriage and black
the color of mourning. In China, it's the opposite: white is a color of
mourning, black for marriages.

While the psychology of color is a fascinating topic, and it's not a bad
idea to study it a bit, I wouldn't rely too heavily on it except in a very
context-sensitive way. Remember /your/ site's audience and their frames of
reference, which can vary quite a bit even across an area as small as
Europe, where Germans tend to have a somewhat different color sense than,
say, Scandinavians or Eastern Europeans.

There really aren't any hard-and-fast rules here, and even from person to
person associations will be different: many people find low-value, low
chroma color schemes 'depressing,' while I find them relaxing and elegant.
The typical cheery, white schemes to me are gaudy and frivolous.

I'm probably an extreme example, and am almost certainly not at all like
most of the people in your audience, but the same holds for others: this
person may not find a purple and yellow scheme cheery and welcoming because
they went to a high school whose colors were purple and yellow, and spent
most days getting swirlies and being stuffed in lockers by jocks dressed in
those colors.

You cannot, of course, account for all such aberrations in your design, but
remember that the CEO or other decision maker will have their own subjective
issues regarding color, and so will all the visitors. So while color is a
tool for setting mood, it is a very imprecise one.

For more on color, I recommend the book /Color: Art & Science/ edited by
Trevor Lamb and Janine Bourriau. It takes a cross-disciplinary look at color
and investigates artistic uses, the biological mechanisms by which we
perceive it and the cultural contexts surrounding it. Well worth a read.


chris.kaminski == ( design | code | analysis )

------------------------------------------------------------
    As the biggest library if it is in
    disorder is not as useful as a small
    but well-arranged one, so you may
    accumulate a vast amount of knowledge
    but it will be of far less value to you
    than a much smaller amount if you
    have not thought it over for yourself.
    -------------------------------<< Arthur Schopenhauer >>