What is Digg?40 Comments
- darkstar949, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15But black goes with anything, including more black!
- tikistyle, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14More people should study color theory. This article didn't go into much depth, but it does touch on a hot issue today. There are too many "wed designers" out there without a clue, who know just enough to be dangerous.
We're paying for their foolishness, with our eyes. - timxpx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12now if they could only teach developers to wear matching colors when they dress themselves...
- nicnic77, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12"The end result is an infinite supply of legible, vaguely appealing, candy-colored graphs, as in these two figures"
No..no.. they're utterly hideous and unappealing. - mattmollysdad, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10One aspect of coloring that I found most interesting over the years is that people of different cultures and countries see colors differently. Not only were they unable to see the difference between say "Candy Apply" Red, and "Stop Sign" Red, they didn't even have the words to describe the differences. During the 1970 -1980's I worked in Japan, Korea and Taiwan and found that their limited vocabulary in describing colors impacted their abilities to see the differences. We were manufacturing jackets for the US and would quite often find that a finished product like a "chocolate" Brown leather jacket had a "burgundy" nylon lining sewed inside. To the people making the garment this was not only the same family but the same color. Our instructions were for the lining to be dyed to match the outer shell and this is what they came up with. Thankfully sometime in the late 70's a very expensive computer became available that could scan the colors we wanted and describe them with hue and chroma numbers. This worked as long as we took the time to give them the machine. Point is if there is no word equivalent word for "ski blue" vs. "robin egg shell blue" then it will be impossible for millions of people to see the differences. Thus "art department" designers for web pages need to know who their customer is.
- tfinniga, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Color Scheme Generator
http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html
Actually works pretty well. Useful for the aesthetically challenged.
Or, as the professor who taught my GUI class suggested, just hire an artist. They're cheaper than programmers, and their stuff looks a lot better. - liquilife, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15This comment comes from a guy with a Marijuana leaf in his avatar. What a great way to show that you know what you are talking about!
/sarcasm - Vaelan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Couple more color selectors I've used in the past:
Color Blender - http://www.colorblender.com/
Colors On The Web - http://www.colorsontheweb.com/ and their tool Color Wizard - http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp - ibiza420, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9@liquilife : why the hell should the pot leaf affect if he knows what he is talking about or not ? Pot doesn't make people retards, it makes them stoned.
- somerandomnerd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Microsoft don't make people retards.
Admittedly, they make computers that retards can use, with the inevitable consequences of that action.
Not that I'm saying that all Windows users are retards of course. Just that some of them... might not be able to use another OS...
Sorry- I tried to defend Microsoft there, but I just don't have it in me. - Tandaemonium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Color Theory was one of the most beneficial design classes I ever took.
- davidlow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Error in article: When the color saturation value is at a maximum, the article claims that the produced color is always white. This is incorrect. It's true for the brightness value, but with the saturation value an increase represents a more vivid color. Imagine turning a knob on your TV that goes from black/white to full color.
- DigitalDud, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Basically, RGB sucks, LAB is better.
- counterplex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I used a similar method to what he describes in the article for a search-term highlighting routine. I got the idea looking at Google's search-term highlighting but didn't want to restrict myself to fixed palettes etc.
Basically I would generate random vaguely pleasing background colors on which I'd place either black or white text depending on the saturation of the background. It was actually kinda cool to see it in action. - zeiben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"We're paying for their foolishness, with our eyes."
Yeah. They're like, fashion terrorists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw8ZRHVrWfI - AlanLivingston, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@ibiza420
Uhhh... Can you prove that pot doesn't make people retards? In my experience, long term use does. Of course, I'm only one guy seeing maybe a handful of stoners... We're talking retarded here, in the colloquial sense, not clinical. Oh wait... Let me simplify for you... Ahh... Never mind. - logomancer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Agave is a very slick GNOME app for picking color schemes:
http://home.gna.org/colorscheme/ - Centius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Interaction of Color: Revised Edition by Josef Albers is a great resource for learning about color. Color is the most relative means in art so you need to learn how colors interact with each other and why they do so. That book is extremely interesting and you will learn a ton from reading it.
If you want to learn about color on your own grab a couple books like that, get a bunch of paint chips/samples and start experimenting with the examples they give. - streetstealth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Everyone who does anything involving both visuals and data should read a book or two by Edward R. Tufte, especially Envisioning Information.
If you're formally trained as a designer, you'll be a better one for it.
If you don't have a design education but read Tufte and take it to heart, every future project you work on stands to benefit.
Tufte's a genius, and I guarantee a bit will rub off on you! - meldroc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The problem with the bottom candy-colored graphs is that they don't have enough contrast. It's hard to pick out the inner bar from the outer bar because there's too much alpha, and the colors are too desaturated, thus not far apart.
Gotta find a happy medium. Too much saturation and too many colors, and you have an angry fruit salad. De-saturate too much and you can't tell the colors apart at all. - Ademan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Programmer art is kinda like picasso, only unintentional, I know because my projects always die because of a lack of any decent art, its so hard to find someone I trust (see: have at least met) that's willing to work for free with me, well, i've got plenty of programmer friends, just no artistic ones
- liquilife, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.duggmirror.com/design/Color_Theory_for_Developers/
Site is already down.. heh. - MrUnderbridge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Gotta find a happy medium. Too much saturation and too many colors, and you have an angry fruit salad. De-saturate too much and you can't tell the colors apart at all."
Yeah, when those guys go nuts with that crap, it's like trying to drive with fogged-up windows. Not fun. - cmearns, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I say use something like this, and learn from someone else's work.
http://beta.dailycolorscheme.com/
http://www.alistapart.com
I am a designer, and I hate to say it, but there isn't much design that isn't inspired by past design. True creativity is quite rare, and often not designed for usability anyway. Use all the tools and blogs and examples you can as inspiration, and it'll be a winner. - AlanLivingston, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Two issues I picked up when I skimmed the article.
First, he says when Sat. = 0, the color is gray. Actually, the gray scale matches the brightness value. If the brightness is 0, it will be black. If 1, then white. Gray values fall in between.
Second, looking at the color wheel, generally when creating a color wheel, you're going to either modulate the hue as an angle like he says and then the radius of the polar coordinate is either Saturation or Brightness. In this case, he's seems to be holding brightness and Saturation constant. But there's some oddness going on. It looks like brightness is being modulated with the angle which is clearly incorrect. See how it looks like there are bright bands every 120 degrees or so. I expect if you re-generate this wheel with zero Saturation, you'd see bright bands instead of a uniform gray value.
Also, looking at the color wheel, there's some problems there. - metafore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1thanks, i've been needing something like that. i'm the guy they're talking about using easy rgb :(
- jsv1, on 05/28/2008, -0/+0Some basic color theory seems wrong in that article. Almost like he mixed up subtractive with additive models.
Other color tools are available here: http://color.singrafix.com/resources - ephemere, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@ibiza420:
Liquilife was being sarcastic...he was making fun of the parent post (I know it was dugg down, but you should at least un-hide and read the parent when you reply to a thread). Of course, noting the 420 in your username, perhaps you unwittingly proved him right... - markho, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I'm not denying your experience in the East, but your basic assertion that people can only tell the difference between colours they can describe with a name is ludicrous. I work with colours all day every day: 99% of them have no name, I don't apply my own names to them, and yet I can easily tell the difference between them.
For instance, the blue border of this text input box which I am currently using, and the blue background of the comment header, do not have names yet are clearly distinguishable to me. Am I missing something in your explanation? - paulharrison, on 01/18/2008, -0/+0As DigitalDud said, CIELAB is better. It's based on human perception of color, specifically the opponent-process model.
I've found that, for each dimension of LAB, giving one color a middling value and the other an extreme value. A random color scheme generator based on this theory can be found here:
http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh-files/blog/01200382 ...
Color conversion math can be found here:
http://www.easyrgb.com/math.html
To go from CIELAB to RGB, you need to go via XYZ. There's a javascript version of this in the first url. - spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3I've been smoking for 9 years and I'm gainfully employed, graduated at the top of my class in post-grad, a published writer, blah blah blah. Marijuana hasn't impaired me at all except for while I'm stoned, and even then I accomplish some pretty neat stuff sometimes..
- toastydeath, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Did anyone else think "quantum chromodynamics" when reading the title "Color theory," only to be vastly disappointed?
- digival, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1job security for designers, my friend...
- PoVRAZOR, on 10/12/2007, -5/+4Yeah... this article is not all that impressive. Use HSV/L/B/Whatever! Great, now I'm an expert!
*cough*
Anyone know an article that'll teach something meaningful? - mattmollysdad, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0markho
I think that cultures have an influence on how we see colors and even how we hear sounds.. and in the end the lack of a vocabulary to describe the differences proves it. What we have learned from childbirth either expands or limits our abilities to distinguish differences. Western music is based on some sort of tonal scale that has octave, whole or half steps between them... if I hear something I might be able to say that one note is a third above the other... if I was exposed to a music system based on a different tonal system then I wouldn't be able to describe it and might not even hear the difference.. same was with colors... I was amazed by the differences... In Korea they had probably 6 or 7 different "reds" while we have probably 50... so the culture comes first, then the language... and I think the lack of vocabulary corresponds to the amount of colors one can see. Also since the 70's the colors/terms for colors has grown and this might not now be a concern... but I thought it interesting the correlation between language and sight and sound. - porkstacker, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Umm, no, please leave the colour theory to the designers. Mmmkay? Thanks!
- sdumont, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0It's only a test
- PoVRAZOR, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Oh look... it's not responding. Ha ha!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -24/+7This site is run by Ziff Davis and sponsored by Microsoft. What a great source for design information!
/sarcasm
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