Coloring Outside the Lines

by Mary E. Carter

This series of articles about color is designed to help you get started right now selecting colors for your site. Artist and author Mary E. Carter explains in plain English the color basics and gives you instant tips to help you be colorful without being off-color. And her color theory is sugar coated to make it more palette-able. In no time at all, you'll be coloring inside and outside the lines. Welcome!

• What is color? This obvious question has myriad answers, depending on who you are.
• People see color first: Color gives viewers a feel for your site, long before they start reading the content.
• A dizzying spin around the color wheel: Colors create moods and impressions. Here are a few rules of thumb about basic colors.
• Good color is a matter of opinion: You can't please everyone all of the time, so do your best.
• Color is a long topic: Here's a preview of columns to come.

As any clown
will tell you
color creates mood

The choice of colors on your Web site is your first form of communication with your viewers. It creates a mood, and quite literally colors what you are saying.

If your colors connote "frivolity" when you mean to say "businesslike," you may not grab the attention of the people you want to talk to.

Go to almost any reference on color theory and you will find a definition of and about color. On the Web or in a book, you will quickly discover that color is not easily defined using words.

What is color?

I know, that sounds like an obvious question. We all know what color looks like. But describing color is like describing music; so much of it is in the eye of the beholder—and different people see it differently. If the beholder is a scientist, you will get one definition of color; if she is an artist you will get another; if he is a Web master, you'll get yet another.

The scientist will give you a very long, sometimes painfully analytical definition of color, involving everything from the physiology of your inner eyeball to the visible spectrum of light rays.

The artist will give you nice round color wheels, neatly organized by hue.

The Web master will provide yet a different kind of information; he will tell you about RGB color effects and about additive color (which we view on paper) and subtractive color (the color we see on our monitors).

But no matter which definition of color you prefer, when it comes down to the practical matter of designing your Web site, sooner or later you will be confronted with colors, hundreds of them, and you will be required to select them in a manner that will enhance the look of your site as it is viewed on a wide variety of computer monitors.

People see color first

Long before anyone fully absorbs the content of your Web pages, they will see the colors on your page. Some people will like your colors. Some will not. What you want to do is to minimize the number of people who do not while not becoming so bland that no one really likes them, either.

You also don't want your serious site to be undermined by colors that are too playful, or your playful site made dull with serious colors. How do you know which colors are serious and which are playful? You already know.

You may not have thought about it, but you see things every day, and you immediately know which colors strike you as feminine or masculine, rich or stark, serious or fun. What you have to do is start noticing colors—consciously pay attention, seeing what colors are used where, and how you react to them.

And you don't want the colors you choose for type to make your site harder to read (I've tried to read some sites that just plain made me nauseous).

In my humble opinion (which never is), there is such a thing as too much of a good thing when it comes to understanding color. All of the color theory in the world will not help you select pleasing and readable colors for text.

An emotional, cultural, and connotative spin around the color wheel

The millions of colors we can perceive (if we're not color blind) can create moods and impressions that are hard to fight.

These things are buried deeply in our collective unconscious and generally, every color creates given reactions in people across populations.

You need to know general color concepts before making color choices for your Web site. Here are a few rules of thumb, but as you will see, ambiguity thrives in this colorful mix.

Red: It's not for nothing that circuses feature bright reds. Nor is a round red nose superfluous to the clown, Santa Claus, or the inebriate. Red speaks of extremes—fire, blood, heat, excitement, bellicosity, passion, intensity—and, when used on the bulbous nose, of tippling. Red can be sexy—as in lipstick. Or bawdy—as in velvet draperies. Red rages—coloring the inflamed jowls of Mike Ditka. Red sells passion every February 14th. Red was a pejorative in the 1950s. Redheads are seen to be passionate or, in the case of I Love Lucy's famous redhead, hard to tame.

Orange: Orange is hot, vibrant. It's sunshine. It's tropical flowers. Hawaiian shirts. highway road crew vests. It is spicy, engaging, and big. If you want to stand out in a room, wear orange. All of the rich shades of orange enhance the hair color we call "red." In its yellow range, it is a school bus. It is sporty; you see it used for tents, sleeping bags, rugged outdoor clothing. Orange is a wonderful bright healthy fruit, bursting with juice. The only food I know of that is called by its color. Why is that?

Yellow: Yellow is spring. Daffodils, daisies. It can be childlike and innocent. Bunnies and big beach balls and pull-toy ducks. If very bright, it can alert one to danger, as when it is used on roadside signs. If very pale, it can remind one of lemon chiffon. It can be floaty, light, delicate. It may be the color of choice by children who draw the sun with radiating stick rays spreading into the blue sky. Yellow rooms make people feel warmer and more comfortable. Yellow used to be slang for chicken, which was slang for scaredy-cat, which was slang for fearful.

Green: Green is the one color nobody will agree on. Is it Astroturf? Is it Ireland's shamrock? Is it that deep bottle green that encloses a fine cabernet? Velvety and dark and shimmering as in deep velvet? Scarlett O'Hara's sparkling eyes? Or is it a kind of sleazy motel carpet color, despised by all but the very fatigued traveler. Be careful of split pea green as it can sicken the viewer. Army issue green can evoke all kinds of unpleasantness. Green can be tricky as it arouses more passion than perhaps red. At least that is this artist's experience. Green means inexperienced. Or does it mean nauseated? Or is it envy?

Blue: Singing the blues? Is that really true? Think of the sky. The reflections of sky onto water. It can be cool and icy when very pale. Magisterial and spiritual when dark and rich. It can be businesslike when it leans to the gray. Sporty when it is used in swimming pool ads, yacht accessories, polo shirts. Sensual like a tropical sea. Neon blue evokes bars and their denizens. Jeans blue evokes comfort. Why are we blue when we are sad? Is it those blue circles under the eyes of the chronically sleep-deprived? Then again, blue blood connotes aristocracy. And a blue stocking is a female intellectual of a certain era.

Purple: Purple is traditionally the color of royalty. It can be pale and Easter-y or dark and syrupy. It can evoke quiet power or light-hearted frivolity. It can be sophisticated when leaning to puce or very doll-like when tinged with pink. It is another of those risky colors because it has been co-opted for use on symbols that are displayed in the gay community. I actually had a client long years ago who forbade any use of purple on graphics; they were that prejudiced against it. I love it so much that when I paint I have a slogan: When in doubt, paint it purple. The purple heart is a soldier's reward. Purple with rage can cause apoplexy. Purple prose might be these.

Black and white

Is black a color? Is white? Don't get me started. It all depends. Are you talking additive or subtractive? Impressionist or post? Look. Let's keep this thing simple. We'll call them colors and use them just as we would use any other color. Which means, how they behave will depend on what other colors you use them with, how much of them you use, and for what psychological purposes. Let me say this about black and white; opinions about them are rarely a case of black and white.

For instance. Any werewolf will tell you that black creates terror. However, Coco Chanel told us it was the color of the "little black dress." See what I mean. Then again, I suppose the latter could dispense its own form of terror, too, given the right girl and an uncertain partner.

White is innocence and purity. The bride's dress is a symbol thereof. Or is it the light at the end of that ubiquitous near-death experience? In Japan, white signifies death. With a certain uncanny connotation? Opinions will vary.

Use black or white as a foil for almost any other color and use the Netscape HTML Color Wheel Web site as a starting point for effective use of color on these two most basic of all the colors.

Tip #1: Color communicates subtle, but important "information" about your site long before people read its content.

Good color
is a matter
of opinion

Your "too green" might be my "perfect" leaf color. His red tie might be too blue for her. She may cringe at wearing orange. But he might be a highway worker and roadside safety demands that he wear orange.

Color choices depend upon cultural, environmental, and connotative factors and upon plain old prejudice and pettishness. Add to this mix the fact that a growing percentage of the population is color blind and you have a mass of opinions about color. Some people are able to see colors only in the red/green scale. Some in the blue/orange range. And some very few (besides your pets) only see shades of black and gray.

And, even among the color-blessed, wide variations of opinion rage over which red is too blue and which blue is too violet. Two of us, that I know of so far, even have a "green" eye and a "red" eye. With my left eye I see the full range of colors, but each one tinged with a cool green. My right eye perceives all of the colors of the rainbow, but tinged with a red hue.

Naturally, I contend that this functionality is a feature, not a bug, and that it makes me hypersensitive to color the way some chefs are hypersensitive to flavor. In my many years, I have met only one other person with this same green-eyed, red-eyed trait.

What I'm getting to is this: No matter how carefully you select your Web colors, no matter by what measure, you will not be able to please everyone all of the time. This will be the one fact you will have to learn to live with.

Once you select your colors, do not be too put off with the first e-mail you receive that says, "You must be color blind. I HATE blue!" If you try to find a color combination that all potential Web visitors will like, you will never get your site up and running.

Instant tip #2

Color choices are a matter of opinion. Don't sweat the person who says they hate blue. Go ahead, use blue if you like blue—and if blue is appropriate for the feeling you're trying to convey.
 

Color Is A Long Topic

I used to have an art professor who had a sign on his door: Ars Longa Vita Brevis. Art is long, life is short. So, too, with color.

See a series of pre-selected color palettes that can help you set the right mood for your site.

About the author

Regular contributor Mary E. Carter is an artist and the author of Electronic Highway Robbery: An Artist's Guide to Copyrights in the Digital Era published by Peachpit Press and available at amazon.com. Look for her articles about copyright law on this site. Currently, she is painting large pieces of furniture on commission whereupon she considers the vagaries of color on a daily basis. Click here to email her.

Illustrations by Rob Colvin, "The Big Idea" for Artville