So, you know your client and his/her preferences. You know what you want your target audience to feel when they see your web design.
Knowing the emotion you want to convey in any graphic design allows you to move on to the next step in designing your website:
Know thy colours
Colours have both temperature and emotion associated with them. For example: sky blue has the effect of making people feel optimistic. A shade darker than sky blue has a calming effect on people. When combined with amber colours in typography and featured images, there is a feeling of pleasure that arises. Such colours are excellent for corporate web designs and dental websites. A similar shade of green has the same effect but feels healthier because of the association of that colour with plants. However, amber used in conjunction with this colour has slightly less effect because of slightly less contrast in values.
Single colours (green, royal blue) are excellent for banking websites as are white backgrounds. Introduce multiple colours into these sites at your own risk. My advice is to be very conservative in your application of colour to banking websites. Single colours have the effect of making an unmitigated statement with no compromises. It has the effect of making people feel secure. Royal blue works well, so does a light vibrant green or even a darker green as long as the use of colour is conservative. Colours as bold as orange can also do the trick as long as the colour makes a clear statement and doesn’t get mitigated or diluted by other colours. More colours make people feel agitated or excited – something you don’t want to happen in a banking website but do want to happen in a shopping website. |
Dark backgrounds and vibrant fluorescent colours in images and type appeal to a gaming crowd. Such colours create sense of drama – fun, warm and yet somewhat alien and fantasy-like. Greens, blues and reds work well as interface colours as long as one colour dominates all the rest. Grays work well in creating metal. Yellows you have to be a bit careful with on black as the effect can be very young (which works well in a kiddie website) but it has a powerful effect if used in highlights and typography. Against a white background, yellow can be a bit more mature and feminine - even elegant.
Colours also create a sense of distance. If you put a single red line next to a blue line on a black background, the blue line will look like it is farther away. You can actually create designs that mimic a 3D effect simply by using colour. Colours towards the red end of the spectrum appear to be closer than colours towards the blue end.
Similarly, colours towards the red end of the spectrum appear warmer. Blue is a cooler colour than red. Green is a warmer colour than blue. If you want to create a sense of warmth, ambers and reds work well (especially when contrasted in the same design with blues).
Emotionally, reds feel more passionate and blues feel safer and more soothing. Pastel colours are more feminine and emotionally create a sense of relaxation and security. Greens are somewhere in between – feeling vibrant and emotionally healthy. Green and yellow are dangerous colours to mix together. In fact any two colours that are too close together on the colour wheel don’t work well in the same design.
Grays work well with any colour and a lot of gray makes the few uses of colour really stand out in your web design.
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