I had a couple of work-related calls this morning which somehow happily spilled into way past 1pm. By the time I got off Zoom, I was slightly preoccupied Rachel may have heard my rumbling stomach. After a swift bite to eat, I completed a very minor but new piece of work, a palette suggestion for a new client. I always get clients with existing branding guidelines, hence all I need to do is simply use the same fonts and colours in my videos, but this one is starting from scratch and whilst he did have an existing colour combo inherited from some other endeavour of his, I lifted two of the most promising shades and went from there.
Sometimes non-creative types will tell you that it is amazing to have no constraints and no boundaries because the sky’s the limit. Ugh. I beg to differ. Constraints and boundaries, starting points and objectives make us better at creating. Consider that in the development of a palette I could start from any shade at all. Any shade. If you’ve heard that the colour wheel spins 24 named colours, that would be entirely correct. But if you’ve ever moved, even by a fraction of a pixel, your cursor, you will also know that within those 24 shades there are millions.
Unless you pay me several thousands in order to dish out an infinite number of colour palettes for you, we do need a starting point. Maybe your favourite colour is green [yes but which green? Let’s leave that convo for another time], or maybe you want to give a sense of purpose and action and want to use hot pink. Great, we can start from there.
The options are then whittled down dramatically, from millions to 4 or 8 in seconds. But it does not stop there because if, like me, you like vivid shades, you need to be a little bit careful so that you don’t give the visitor of your website a veritable headache. And without spending all day on here writing a veritable essay about colour theory for which at this moment I have neither the time nor the inclination, you need to bear in mind the feel and sensation that you want to evoke in your prospective customer when choosing colours. Which is why, actually, people like me exist: so that you can be guided in the process and you don’t fall, alone and dazzled, into a rabbit hole you will struggle to find the exit of.