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Color Secrets: Vibrancy

Color secrets: Vibrancy

Vibrancy is about how intense a color is, how strong the color appears to be. It is not just how bright or colorful it is, instead it is more about how pure and vivid the color is. Artists who use physical paints often use this term to describe how well a color matches the original paint out of a tube or to compare two colors next to each other. Digital artists and creatives also use vibrancy, usually as a way to compare an object’s color to a background or another element. Vibrancy can be good but also bad. Two strong colors like orange and blue hues tend to look like they are visually vibrating when they are next to each other. This is why people usually try to use a vivid color paired with a duller or desaturated color. Navy…

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Five Quick Color Tips For Your Next Project

five quick color tips

Many developers and designers I talk to are very frustrated when it comes time to pick colors for a project. It can be hard to choose the right color or set of colors for a project. I want to share with your five quick tips for using color in your next project so you can make the best user experience possible. (more…)

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Five Tips for Creating Better Color Palettes for the Web

Color palettes using simple and complex colors

I’ve put together five tips for creating better color palettes based on a recent talk I gave to computer science students. Faced with working on their first mobile apps or sites, they had never really been given advice on choosing color palettes. I realized this is one of those gaps in knowledge; part of the missing manual of design experience you build over time as a developer or designer. I hope you find them useful too. (more…)

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Secrets to Color Matching Monitors and Printers

color comparison

I was recently asked how a designer can make sure the colors on the screen and the colors on the printer are the same. The hard and short answer is a glowing screen and a printed piece of paper will never look quite the same. They are two different mediums. If you look around you on a typical day, you will also notice lit up signage, billboards, vehicles, packaging, and clothing. Many of those are also produced using a color match system. If you take one color, even a color system matched color, it will not look exactly the same to the naked eye across difference materials. (more…)

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