Oh boy color. Red, Green, and Blue. It never ends up being that sim­ple does it?? Too much red, too much blue, not enough green, well shit. It’s a stress­ful job to get it just right, and then you have to prove to the client it’s the best choice and hope they don’t say “Can you make the green­ish color pink instead? I like pink.”

Then you have what I call the ‘pink’ prob­lem. Think you know what pink is? How about this?

You hear that Mr. Ander­son? That is the sound of inevitabil­ity. The sound of your client scoff­ing at you while you try and explain why even tho it’s not the pink they were imag­in­ing, it’s still the bet­ter fit for the design.

Here’s some tips:

• Unless you start with the client ask­ing for par­tic­u­lar col­ors, always begin in black and white, and shades of gray.
• Search until you find the per­fect primary(meaning first, not Red, green, or blue) color, then build around that.
• Play with tints and shades before you work with com­ple­men­tary and anal­o­gous colors.
• Ask other design­ers about your choices.
• Get inspired by web­sites like:
  • Kuler
  • Col­or­go­rize
  • Color Schemer
  • Colour Lovers
  • Mogdesign’s list of color assist websites

Ever stare at or say a word enough and the word becomes detached from the world and means noth­ing that it used to mean to you? Color is the same. You sit there too long design­ing, play­ing, tweak­ing, and it doesn’t look right any­more after 20 hours or so. The mixed light­ing of the room messes with the rods and cones in your eyes and teal becomes green. You worry, you show every­one, you won­der if you want to change com­pletely that which you’ve spent so much time on. In the end you need some truth. Here it is.

As long as your col­ors don’t clash like Bobby Brown and Whit­ney, aren’t neon(yeah thats an opin­ion), and aren’t your client’s opponent’s col­ors, don’t sweat your deci­sion. They look good.

There’s so much that will affect the per­cep­tion of the final color. Printer fluc­tu­a­tions, mon­i­tor cal­i­bra­tions, light source, and most of all, the view­ers per­cep­tion. I highly doubt that every­one sees every­thing exactly the same way. Every part of our life expe­ri­ence effects our per­cep­tion, not just men­tal per­cep­tion but phys­i­cal per­cep­tion as well. Col­ors next to col­ors will change how we per­ceive col­ors. And thats all a fact. To you, it might never be per­fect, so don’t fret!  Some­times, Salmon IS pink.

Here’s some Zen for the day, thanks for stop­ping by:

A sam­ple of my friend Erik Hess’ Pho­tog­ra­phy, check him out he rocks:

Egypt / Lebanon Mon­tage from Khalid Mohtaseb on Vimeo.

Please com­ment to con­tinue my con­ver­sa­tion about color!

Chris Trude

Chris is a twitter-head, blog­ger, and web/graphic designer by night, and an in-house graphic designer by day. Also hap­pens to be an avid prac­ti­tioner of awe­some­ness. Feel free to sub­scribe to my feed, or fol­low me on Twit­ter to keep in touch with my day to day.