xBlog: The visual thinking weblog
14th May 2008

Follow the Rainbow: 101 Color Resources for Web Designers

“Do you freak out if someone asks you to match print colors to Web colors? Or, maybe you just can’t decide whether the orange would work better with the blue or the green. Either way, many designers may not realize how easy it is to choose a palette for that new Web design. Additionally, many designers might be surprised to learn that they can stay on top of color trends with a few visits to fashion design Web sites. All those tips and more are listed below in this list of 101 color resources for Web designers.”

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10th March 2008

Getting Accurate Colors When Printing Proofs from InDesign

“I am in the process of printing a postcard out of InDesign CS3. The background was created in Photoshop CS3, and the information has been added with InDesign. When printing a proof from Photoshop, I get the color I expect to get. Printing out of InDesign, I do not. I even created a box in InDesign with the same color values, and the color is still not correct. I have checked the color profiles, and the object color profile, and they are the same. Any Ideas?”

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9th January 2008

ColorJack: Color Theory

“Creative professionals daily delve into the world of Color. Color is powerful, it affects us all in countless ways. ColorJack’s tools help us choose the right colors for websites, print jobs, or any design project.” (Thanks Dave!)

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23rd October 2007

Sim Daltonism

“Sim Daltonism is a color blindness simulator for Mac OS X. It filters in real-time the area around the mouse pointer and displays the result — as seen by a color blind person — in a floating palette.

Since there are many types of color blindness, Sim Daltonism allow you to choose the one you want to see.”

posted in Accessibility, Apple/Macintosh, Color, Graphic design, Software/Hardware, Web design | Permalink | Comments Off

28th August 2007

Pantone’s Missed Chance

Tim Bray: “Today I see, via John Gruber, that Pantone has been acquired by X-Rite. In 1995, I gave Pantone’s CEO some advice that might have made them a lot of money. He didn’t take it, but it’s an amusing story.”

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18th July 2007

Dark and Fleshy: The Color of Top Grossing Movies

“I started to think that NC-17 movies perhaps shared a common visual string in their marketing materials — dark and provocative… I started with R and pulled up the top five movies’ posters. Less provocative but very dark. I moved on to PG-13’s five. Not provocative at all but dark nonetheless. PG’s five? Much friendlier but, yes, dark. It wasn’t until I got to the five Gs that I started seeing some bright colors in the movie posters.” (Thanks HOW Blog!)

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17th July 2007

13 More Great Color Legends

“A little while ago we showed you 11 of the Great Color Legends and why they exist… and now we’re back with 13 more great color legends… Green Cards, Blue Balls, Highlighter Yellow, Ferrari Red & more. Be sure to let us know if there is a great color legend you’d like us to cover in a future edition.”

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21st June 2007

Safari brings color-managed browsing to Windows

“Photographer Rob Galbraith reports that Apple’s newly released Safari 3 beta for Windows is color managed–bringing color management to Windows browsers for the first time. I never thought I’d say it, but this is great news. Now there’s a cross-platform way to present accurate color images on the Web. Check ‘ICC Profile’ in Photoshop’s Save for Web dialog to include the info needed for color management to do its thing.”

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12th April 2007

PANTONE solid chips: Peel and place coated

Pantone Post-Its! “We took the PANTONE SOLID CHIPS coated book and added new features that make using chips more convenient than ever. Simplified, neat chip removal: Peel off an adhesive-backed chip and place where you want without using staples, glue or tape. Each chip has smooth edges and, when removed, leaves the host page neat and intact.” (Thanks HOW Blog!)

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30th November 2006

kuler

“kuler is brand new from Adobe Labs. kuler helps you explore, create and share color themes from your web pages, design projects and other creative work.

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19th October 2006

Color Codes Matching Chart HTML (Convert CMYK, RGB Hex)

“Note that the conversions in this color codes chart are best described as ‘nominal’. They will produce an invertible conversion between the RGB code and a subset of CMYK; that is, one can take an RGB color code and convert to certain CMYK colors, and from these CMYK colors obtain the matching, original RGB codes. However, conversion of CMYK colors to RGB cannot be reversed; this means, given a CMYK color code which is converted to RGB, performing the former conversion may not give the original CMYK color.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

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21st February 2006

Fashion in Colors

“Fashion in Colors explores color as a design element through 300 years of western fashion. Costumes are grouped by color in a dramatic installation in Cooper-Hewitt’s galleries, allowing previously unseen details and structures of the clothes to emerge for the viewer and showing how similar elements and trends appear in dresses separated by hundreds of years.”

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20th June 2005

WEB COLOR SCHEMES

“Get inspired by these web-smart color schemes, taken from a variety of sources and updated regularly.”

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17th June 2005

The Art of Camo

“Camouflage, you might think, is about blending in. But just as often, and especially these days, it’s about standing out. Camouflage hides shapes by generating hints of many other possible shapes. Instead of staying silent, in other words, camouflage succeeds by being noisy: it hides signal with noise. Socially and esthetically, too, camouflage is more and more often about advertising allegiance.” (Thanks Coudal Partners!)

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9th April 2005

COLOURlovers

“COLOURlovers: a place to view, rate and review some lovely colours & palettes. the idea is to create a place of color inspiration where a designer of any sort can see new and lovely colours… find out what colors are hot, what work well in other uses… and simply make some love with colour.”

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