Choosing the right colors for your web design is a decision that should not be taken lightly. Color is the first thing viewers notice on a webpage. It can evoke a variety of strong emotional reactions and each color can contain a different association. Although everyone’s experience and taste can vary greatly, there are still some basic tenants one can follow when working with color:
Consistency
This applies not only to font and background color, but also to the images and other cursory elements. It would be awkward to have a black and white image on a site full of bright, colorful backgrounds. It is typically best to choose colors that go along with the company branding and it is important that the brand identity seamlessly fits into the design. Also, limiting the design to just a few main colors—2 or 3 main colors and 1 or 2 accent colors—is usually a good standard and helps to maintain the consistency. Too many colors can cause your design to become erratic and visually confusing to the viewer.
Contrast
If you use colored copy, make sure that it contrasts well with the background to be easily legible. Stark color contrast is a powerful tool and can draw the eye, so make sure the most important elements have the most contrast in the design. Having muted colors for your title copy and a bright bold color for the body would be a poor use of contrast, applying viewer focus to the wrong element.
Complements
Complementary color choices are also extremely important. And it’s not just the literal complementary colors that are key, but also colors that complement each other as an accent or highlight. There are many different types of color balances and every designer should be very familiar with color theory and its impact on design. Well, I suggest you can use some online tools such as Kuler Adobe (kuler.adobe.com) to deal with the best combination.
Sometime keep one-two colors . Less color which easy to manage the content and contrast of the branding.
Color Theory
Some designers feel that it is enough to just have a feel for the right colors and that color theory is unnecessary. While having a good eye for color can certainly help develop a good design, color theory is still important. It is important to know what types of emotions your colors will convey so that you cater to your target audience. Click here for more information on color theory. See Color Theory from ColorJack (www.colorjack.com).
Marketing requested to design a banner for exhibition purpose, the content of the banner that include of all range of solutions provide by TMS.
The banner measurements are 31″ (W) x 78″ (H). It’s about a person height. And text was quite straight forward. Although it was plenty of space to insert pictures or images but I decided not to use any of it.
Somehow, it was pretty fun to see how to form the typo with elements, ‘Typography is an art’. Well, I’d done some research like how the angle and rather keeping the same horizontal path.
Instead of, I used a lot of elements such as stripes, rounds or curves to form together with typo.
Eventually, we go for something clean and neat…
It has been quite some time I’d never been to any Design conferences or exhibition; lately I saw this article from newspaper posted about KLDesignweek 2009 (www.kldesignweek.com). It was claimed the largest annual international design event held in Malaysia.
So I had this idea to bring along the designers to check it out, hope to refresh their mind and gain some inspirations, ideas and recharge their creative passion! As designers, we are creative - we have to be. Even creative people need inspiration. So the question is, where do we look for inspiration?
Since it was held from 27 March till 4 April, well, it certainly a good time to drive down to KL on Monday, why? I believe Monday’s traffic should be smoother compare to other day.
When we reached at CapSquare that located in between Dang Wangi and Jalan Ampang
(www.capsquare.com.my), there were not many people around, I found out the shopping complex was quite small and it was not located at the hotspot such as Bukit Bintang or KLCC.
It was such a quiet place to explore new things. Btw, most of the pictures were taken by my 2 megapixels phone (p990i); regretted has not brought my gear along. 
The exhibitions have separated into 3 portions at different part of the complex. 2nd floor was occupied by individual designers and creative studios. 3rd floor was occupied by most of the commercial purpose such as colleges, design schools.
Close up and from far. Wonder how much time the designer spent on it!
Some wonderful works were done by local designer. Just wondered some of these as well as alternatives for where to find appropriate sources of inspiration.
One great idea amazed me, recycle plastic bottles and reform it into one ceiling lamp, and designer was actually using part of the handle (see small cutting part). They’re not original anymore, yet it has its own enormous compilation.
After we had our lunch, we continue on the 3rd exhibition area that located on the other site of hall; well, nothing much here and it was displayed all the collection of designers’ ideas - ‘Safe the green‘ or ‘Don’t use Plastic bag’. These ideas motivated people reduce the usage of plastic bag and save the pollution from our month’s earth.
Few of us love the designs so much and which to buy those bags. Too bad, it was for exhibition purpose and not for sale.
At the end of the exhibition, I managed to buy this book-”The Web Designer’s Idea Book” which only cost RM75 from Basheer Graphic Book (www.basheergraphic.com). A book by Patrick McNeil (Creator of designmeltdown.com)
Why I bought it?
First thing in my mind about the nature of business, clients can be our best friends or our worst enemies. We have all experienced it; our client wanting to defy all of your knowledge and control the entire creative process. They see their competitors’ websites and want exactly the same thing “but better“. The problem is that they have uninformed, preconceived notion of their website and neglect to consider the many other factors in building a website.
Well, this could be the reason; we must educate our client so that they may understand your design decisions. And I think this guide book will ‘Feed‘ them nicely.
It’s the ultimate guide to themes, trends and styles in websites design. For example, sites by themes, there’s Nature, Food, Old paper, Splatters, Workplace etc. But the key is to let design galleries inspire to design, not inspire my design.
I try challenge to break the design cycle, explore uncharted territory and be original. Go beyond what has been mentioned here; seek out our own unique inspirations. Anything can inspire you if you will just let it.
