Colour Inspiration Secrets Which Designers Are Aware About

Colour is an important part of any excellent design due to which for over 84.7% of consumers consider colour before buying a product as per truelist. It may be difficult to curate your colour palette while creating since there is so much psychology and emotion linked to the colours you pick. We've compiled a collection of colour inspiration secrets so you can always obtain the ideal colour combo.

We all know that different types of colours scheme evoke different emotions, connections, and responses, all of which have an impact on how your brand is viewed. Simply said, colour selections have the power to create or destroy a design. Colour, in fact, has been found to improve brand recognition by up to 80%, recall, engagement with a design piece, and text comprehension, so when picking a colour scheme for your design (particularly your logo!), make sure the colours you choose are saying something.

We've come a long way from the days when our colour options were restricted to a tiny batch of natural pigments. Our choices are no longer limited to the hues provided by minerals, animals, and plants. Choosing a palette for a design project has become painful, to say the least, due to the enormous number of colour possibilities available. Nearly 8 million user-named colours have been indexed by the Colourlovers community, with over 16 million potential hexadecimal colour combinations. While there is an infinite number of colours to choose from, it's better to limit yourself to three or four when creating. The colour palette you work with will be created as a result of this.

Colour Inspiration Secrets Directly From Designers

On The Go, Capture Inspiration

Callie Hegstrom, the creative designer behind Make Media, advises collecting photographs of lovely hues for colour inspiration: “I capture photos of amazing colour schemes (like flowers or sunsets), then subsequently sample those colours directly in Photoshop.” It's also a wonderful method to ensure that your work is consistent by matching text or images to whatever photo you're working with.” So, if you have a favourite image with a colour scheme, take colour samples from it to create a quick, simple, and effective palette. You can use colour inspiration tool like IM photo editor as well.

Make Use Of A Colour Wheel

To recall what works in terms of colour pairings, artist Marc Chagall coined the phrase "All colours are friends of their neighbours and lovers of their opposites." In this context, the term "friends" refers to hues that are adjacent on a 12-part colour wheel. Chagall, on the other hand, refers to complimentary hues as "Lovers," or tones on the wheel that are exactly opposite each other. “When painting watercolour flowers, a nice technique to depict shadows is to add an analogous colour,” says Cindy Kinash, the Vancouver-based designer behind Cultivated Mind.

This tip applies to nearly any other situation you can think of. To add shadows to your titles or borders to your backdrops, use similar colour schemes. Because these hues are so similar, they generally mix well. By simply matching colours to their wheel neighbours, you may create new combinations! This becomes significant as colour impression accounts for 60% rejection or acceptance of a product as per truelist. If you don't want to sort through these schemes by hand, don't worry: there are plenty of internet tools to assist you to figure out who your favourite colours' friends and lovers are.

Interior Design May Serve As A Source Of Inspiration

When it comes to colour, different design professions face similar problems. Interior designers, for example, must choose textures, materials, and colour schemes that work well together to harmonise rooms. Elena Genova (from MyCreativeLand), a British designer, provides some sound advice in this regard. “I appreciate the interior design guideline, which may be applied to graphic design as well: 60% is the main colour, 30% is the secondary colour, and 10% is the accent colour. Split the secondary colour (or possibly the dominant, but never the accent) if you want to introduce a fourth (and so on) colour.

Try looking into other creative areas (like colour psychology in design) see what colour usage guidelines they have - every artistic discipline is certain to have a few! You'll discover a whole new universe of fantastic colour approaches if you keep your eyes alert for rooms and structures that use colour skillfully.

Make Mood Boards With Colours

Owner of a typography and design business, Nicky Laatz, explains how she saves beautiful colour palettes for later use: “Whenever I see a picture or photo with colours that I like or that appear to blend well together, I save it as a screenshot or bookmark it for later. Then, when it's time to choose a colour scheme, I look through all of my stored photos for ideas, and I always come up with something appropriate.” Allow yourself to look for palette inspiration in a variety of places, including modern designs and historical art, as well as internet and print sources.

You're certainly aware of the value of sites like Pinterest, which enable you to collect and organise a wide range of digital palettes. But what about inspiration in the form of actual objects? Austin Kleon, a designer and author of the book "Steal Like An Artist," is a strong proponent of the "swipe file," a notepad or folder where you may save inspired examples of design and colour that you like. So, whether you come across a great brochure in a magazine, or merely enjoy the way a piece of junk mail has employed colour in its design, file it away.

Then, when you're attempting to come up with a gorgeous palette, have a look through your swipe folder. Colour inspiration in a flash!

Make Use Of Colour Swatches

A digital colour wheel won't always be enough when it comes to deciding on types of colour scheme. Stepping away from the screen and looking at a tangible colour sample can be very inspirational, and Pantone sets give just that. When Callie Hegstrom wants to choose colours the old-fashioned way, she pulls out her favourite Pantone Color Bridge set. “Sometimes it's great to have a tangible guidance that isn't only based on-screen colours,” she says. It's also useful if a customer has a highly specific colour need and requests tangible samples.”

What's great about Pantone swatches? Every Pantone colour has a HEX code to match it. For quick and easy palette building, you may even utilise hexadecimal colours in the IM photo editor colour picker. Pantone samples and other physical colour index sets are also invaluable to any designer working on a project for print. When it comes time to go to the printers, knowing precisely how your colour will look on paper may save you a lot of time, money, and stress. Do inculcate these ideas with the help of IM photo editor and share your experience!