Convert With Color Naturally

Start learning from nature.

Just because your site is sitting on a server and displayed on an artificial screen does not mean you should discard the lessons nature can teach us about effective color harmony. Colors pulled from naturally occurring combinations are less jarring and artificial, and are much more likely to produce a memorable, unique and pleasant emotional response.

Get away from the standards.

Using nature as an inspiration for your color scheme choices can make for some surprising, effective and memorable online destinations. It gets you away from the standard, overused color palettes.

Sometimes even leaders in their industries fall prey to using the same boring colors as everything else. Take computing: HP, Intel, IBM and Microsoft are all predominately blue and gray. It is as though they all got together and signed some sort of color pact. Health care is another example: United, Humana, Aetna, and Blue Cross are all predominately blue, green and gray. With all this sameness, how is a user supposed to remember where they’ve been or what they’ve seen?

Learn from your surroundings.

Choosing a unique color scheme can get you out of these design ruts. It can give your content focus and allow your featured content and navigation to stand out in natural contrast. It also opens up possibilities since inspiration is literally all around you. Carry a digital camera with you at all times and snap off a shot every time you see a particularly compelling, colorful scene even if it’s just a tiny vibrant flower growing on the side of a well used road. Inspiration can be anywhere.

Don’t abandon your principles.

If your brand already has established colors, use those. While you can vary the tint or shade - the amount of white or black you add to a color – do not change color schemes all together. Subtle variations to create emphasis, highlight relevant content, establish navigation, or make the flow of information and graphics more harmonious. A complete abandonment of established brand messaging will confuse customers and make your overall company image seem sloppy and unprofessional.

By: Kristen Friend

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Kristen Friend is the art director at the graphic design company, Luckynine Design. As a graphic, web, and logo design company, Luckynine has worked with companies of all sizes. To learn more, visit www.luckyninedesign.com.