Desperately S eeking
by Tracie Seed Communications & Marketing Manager TSPRA
W
hen you begin thinking about a graphic design project, the first question that comes to mind is, “What colors should I use?” There are many ways you can find inspiration beyond creating a Pinterest board (which is actually a great tool). Before beginning, keep in mind the 60-30-10 rule. While not hard-fast, this theory is to use three colors: a main color for 60 percent of your design, a secondary color for 30 percent and an accent color for the last 10 percent. This recipe can help give a sense of proportion and balance to your design. But if you need to use more or even less, go for it! Find color scheme inspiration just about anywhere. Keep a creative eye open and a camera at hand when you are on vacation, running errands or on a walk. Snap pictures of anything that catches your eye, whether it is a sunset, landscape, a product, some produce, a grouping of flowers, some clothing patterns or anything that sparks your creativity. A great Instagram account that does this for you with their own inspirational images is @the.colour.lab. You can use an Adobe Creative Suite program’s eyedropper tool to choose a color from your image to get the HEX, RGB and CMYK codes to ensure that all your designs are consistent in color. However, sometimes this isn’t the best way as the colors may be altered by surrounding pixels, giving you a more muted version. One of the best way is to upload your photo to an online color generator, such as imagecolorpicker.com or image-color.com, to automatically generate codes that you can use when designing your piece. There are also other ways to find inspiration on the web. One is to visit coolors.co where you can search by colors, keywords or use an automatic palette generator. If you use Canva for your designs, check out canva. com/colors/. On this site, you can generate a palette from a photo, explore color scheme ideas, learn color theory and explore the meanings behind different colors. Whatever colors you land on, ensure your team has the codes, so all your creations are compatible. 50
Winter 2021 | www.TSPRA.org
