Our World of Colors

“..Picture the world, Without any color
You couldn’t tell, One face from the other…”

- Color me blind by Extreme

The way design community is growing now days it’s not surprising as the web & mobile world now understands the importance of designers. It’s no more just about adding colors but a lot more goes into applying right color combination at the right place. Bunch of tools are available on the web to help designers do their tasks more efficiently. I have selected 3 best sites to avoid any cross-weaving of thoughts, which I feel are helpful in creating a wide range of color palettes apart from our dear old favorite ones (I believe each designer has at least one special magical color palette of their own, which saves us during a rainy day)

A must for beginners – ColorBlender

Simple easy to use color blender scale. Allows to quickly Create, Save and

Color challenge for designers

As designers most of us feel, we know just the right tone of a color and no one can challenge us.

I found this interesting site which has online color challenge. I encourage designers to at least once go and take the challenge of color vision.

http://www.xrite.com/custom_page.aspx?PageID=77

It’s an exciting activity and does not take more then 10mins. You just need to drag and drop.

The lower the score, the better color vision you have.

Best part of this color vision test is

How to design a logo – Basic principles/ Best practices

In my earlier post 2009 – Year of redesigned logos I did not consider some of the logos, since I feel the designers did not do justice with them. Redesigning a logo does not need to be a necessity if the spark and purpose is not well utilized. I again request designers not to design for the sake of designing but go deep into the reasoning. Do some homework and recognize the underlying principle of design.

5 Basic principles of Logo designing:

1. Simple, Clear & Crisp – Logo design should be uncomplicated for the viewer and designer.
2. Projection of company’s image should come across clearly & direct
3. Balancing Act – Logo designing is balancing act of creativity. One should not go overboard with the usage of design elements : font, color and shape. The key is correct use of styling and balancing of all these elements to form a composition called ‘logo’
4. Direct hit – Messaging should be direct either through graphics or text and should hit the viewers mind in one go.
5. Black & White as winner – Colors play a very important role but a logo should not lose its sheen when converted in black and white. This is a common issue we all face as designers and prefer to ignore it.

Logo conceptualization:

Color vs Black and White
The last point of logo designing principle is indeed the foremost important territory for a designer to conquer.