PERSONAL WEBSITE - SITE DESIGN - 15.06.2010

A colourful website

Marching colours

ColorMatch Remix. Your website shouldn’t be a colour cacophony. ColorMatch Remix (http://hlrnet.com/colormatch/index.php) helps you to find matching colours. Three sliders (red, green and blue) allow you to compose the desired basic colour. Starting from this, the website will propose eight matching colours. It also specifies the hexadecimal values and RGB codes which you can give to your webmaster or website developer.

Colors on the Web (http://www.colorsontheweb.com) tells you which colours are “safe” for use on websites, as well as which colours are best combined. In the Color Wizard, you should select a specific colour, and the module will look for the matching colours. The Contrast Analyzer is useful as it tells you whether the contrast between colours - for instance the background colour and the text colour - is sufficiently strong. This requires you to enter the hexadecimal codes.

If you’re struggling for inspiration try the Color Wheel. After you’ve hit the Spin button, the module will suggest three random colours. If you like one of them, you can lock it (check the Hold option) and specify whether you wish to use it as your background colour, text colour or secondary colour. A new click on the Spin button starts a search for the matching colours, and the result is shown straightaway.

Mixing colours

Mixing colours online is possible with Color Blender (http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/color-blend/): select two colours (or enter their codes), and the site will show you the intervening hues. Midpoints lets you specify how many hues you wish (maximum ten).

Warm versus cold

Color Scheme Designer (http://www.colorschemedesigner.com) is another very useful tool. This online application lets you turn a wheel in order to find cold or warm colours. The options shown at the top (complement, triad, etc.) let you involve more colours in the process.

Note. In our test this site only worked in Firefox, not in Internet Explorer.

Distilling colours

Suppose you have your own logo or a photo of your business and you wish to integrate this image into your website. What are the matching colours? You can find out via Color Hunter (http://www.colorhunter.com). This website lets you upload an image file (or enter a URL); the service will distil the predominant and matching colours. They are shown neatly in a row, accompanied with their codes. This tells you or your webmaster which colours should be used to accompany the photo or logo on the website.

Photos in the right colour

Are you looking for photos and images that match the colours on your website? Google Images (http://images.google.com) has recently added a new function that shows a colour chart on the results page (in the left menu bar). If you click on a specific colour here, only the matching images will be shown.

Note. Do take into account that all these photos are in principle copyright-protected.