Colour on the web is vital, you need colour. It helps create an identity for your web presence, it helps you be recognized, it aids when presenting ideas, it creates visual cues for users… The list goes on. Colour is important!
When you see this colour, what do you think of? If it’s not Facebook, well done! But for most of us who spend hours and hours on Facebook, this is what this colour makes recognize. Facebook uses this blue everywhere on their site, it’s their visual identity.
What about this one? Twitter! I think you get the point. Using the wrong colour can also impair your visual identity. If you wanted to create a new social media site and used one of these two colours, you wouldn’t stand out. Research your competitors and try using something unique.
Now that I have discussed the importance of colour, we need to ask the question, how do we choose what colour to use? What do colours MEAN.
Let’s talk green. Green is often associated with the environment, nature and ecology. If you are designing a logo for an environmental law firm, you want to use a colour that portrays their message and purpose. Just because you think pink is a really awesome colour, it doesn’t mean it is fit for purpose in every case. It is important for users to be able to relate to an organisations logo, and understand the message they are trying to send. Using green for an environmental law firm will ensure users see the law firm as an eco-friendly workplace. In saying that, you don’t want to go to another law firm and use their colour palette. Choose appropriate colours, but always try and have that creative touch. This is what will make you stand out.
But what if I can’t see colour very well? Did you know that up to 10% of men are colour blind? Can you imagine how frustrating it would be if you were browsing the web and you could hardly read a website because of the colours chosen? Or imagine if you were visually impaired and trying to read something with low colour contrast? It would be awful, frustrating and most of the time, you would just leave the site.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2 (WCAG 2.0) states that the visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1. To test for this, you can simply download the free Colour Contrast Analyser from Vision Australia. All the instructions are on the site and it is so easy to do!
So if you haven’t figured out by now, I love colour, especially when it is used right. I even have these awesome hex colour leggings from Black Milk Clothing! One of my other loves… But I will just leave you with this for today.
P.S. To read more on colour, see colormatters.com. I have never found a site better for learning about colour!
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