:: the other side ::

:: Color: Daily OM and Pixy.cz
From DailyOM - Your Life's Palette:

When we enter a room or see an object for the first time, our minds register its color before any other detail. The colors our eyes can perceive are like words that form a subtle language of mood, energy, and insight. Color can exert a gentle effect on the mind and the body, influencing our dispositions and our physical health. Color has the ability to trigger our emotions, affect the way we think and act, and influence our attitudes. You unconsciously respond to the color of the walls in your home, your car, your clothing, and the food you eat based on your body's natural reactions to certain colors and the psychological associations you have formed around them. The consequences of the decision to paint a room or wear a specific article of clothing therefore goes beyond aesthetics. [read more]

Once you've seen my charts, you know I use a double-box of Crayola crayons. I enjoy tinkering with my charting color schemes and aside from using green/blue hues for rising and red/black for falling, I'll let my intuition be my guide.

However, there are some wonderful tools on the web that are really the bee's knees for learning to better control your color palette. My absolute favorite, and recommended for anyone who likes color, and partiuclarly if you plan to code colors into your web pages, is pixy.cz's wellstyled.com Color Scheme Generator. You start with a "Default" set of blocks, then select a general color hue, and that's where the real fun begins. Having done that, you then can choose chromatically correct schemes based on a single color (monochromatic) up to four colors (Tetradic or Analogic), with sliders that allow you to adjust the color "angle".

And that's not all! Having done that, you then can see that same scheme as the Default, light and dark pastels, high or low contrast. Wowsery WOW. An orgy of color.

This isn't, of course, limited to use for web developing. You can try out different schemes and gauge your reaction to them, allowing you to better understand your own "color moods".

Labels: attitude, computers