[thelist] The use of color (was site header and logo)

Heather Quinn hgquinn at attglobal.net
Mon Dec 31 04:37:55 CST 2001


Hi, Ben.

Your color knowledge goes way beyond mine.  Would you be willing to 
write an Evolt article on color on the web?

Ben Henick wrote:

>...Actually, there is one that comes immediately to mind:  for high/low
>brightness values, inverse colors provide good contrast.
>
>The hard part is coming up with an accent color that fits both those
>colors and the intent of your design.  If anyone here has undertaken
>formal study of color theory as it applies to doing design in the Real
>World, they've probably had some instruction on which accent colors work
>well with a given pair of inverse colors.
>
>>It was just that I recently heard of a complimentary color to each color,
>>and I thought I could use that in order to create visually pleasing sites
>>without choosing the base colour myself.
>>
>
>Erm, while intriguing I'm not sure what the application of such an
>approach would be.  The associations made by a given culture with the
>range of visible hues are often too strong to be ignored by any designer,
>unless their intent is to deliberately "break the rules."  Perhaps that's
>exactly what you're trying to do here.
>
>When you factor in other considerations such as ambient light,
>color-deficient visitors, and type usage, it quickly becomes apparent that
>the traditions associated with applied color theory came into being for
>excellent (and often entirely practical) reasons.
>
>>Since I'll do it in PHP, I think once you have converted your RGB values to
>>HSV, you have to do a rotation of the H angle, change a little bit (random
>>offset) S and V values for not looking too rigid in the choice of colours.
>>Then you'll have to convert back your new HSV values to RGB in order to use
>>them in HTML table borders and likewise graphical elements on your page.
>>
>>from what I understood, the rotation of H angle should be 180°
>>
>...For complements, yes.
>
>60deg and 180deg values suggest primary <=> secondary, while 30deg and
>90deg suggest primary <=> tertiary and secondary <=> tertiary.
>
>This concept applies just as well (if not more effectively) to RGB color
>than to the other commonly used models; in a primary color, one channel is
>predominant; in a secondary color, two channels are predominant; and in a
>tertiary color there is an obvious mathematical relationship between *all
>three* channels.
>
>Before I go, I want to point out the following:
>
>http://www.digital-web.com/columns/digisect/digisect_2001-04.shtml
>
>which disucusses effective ways to use "official-looking" colors,
>specifically those between green and blue.
>
>
-- 
Cheers,

Heather Quinn
info at windyhilldesign.com
http://www.windyhilldesign.com
hgquinn at attglobal.net
http://pws.prserv.net/windyhill







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