In order to share a little bit more about my design life, I'm going to try to write regularly with a peak "inside my studio". I use the term "studio" loosely-- unfortunately, I don't have a cool, artsy room dedicated to my artistic experience. Instead, most of my "studio" is contained within my iMac, in a little corner of my family room. Whatever works, right? I'll share different aspects of my work processes and ideas, and what designing looks like from my perspective.
I just finished a new kit and today, I'm thinking about color...
When starting a new kit, I was originally going to say that I start with either a theme or a color scheme, but the truth is, I always start with color. Even if I have a specific theme in mind, the idea doesn't come together unless I have colors to work with. Colors inspire the mood and feel of the kit, as well as ideas for papers and elements, so it makes sense that color selection is where most designers start.
For the most part, I need at least five colors to start with, then usually add a dark and a light grounding neutral for a total of seven colors. My new kit that I'll release on Thursday actually uses a total of eleven colors.
Pretty, huh? I'm really excited about it!
Sometimes new colors pop up while I'm working. In this kit, for instance, I was working with the original ten and realized that the gold color wasn't quite working as the center for a flower. I added the little bright yellow as an accent here and there, and it worked perfectly. Other times it will be a dark frame or a gingham ribbon that helps tie everything together.
A good rule of thumb I've learned is to never use pure white or pure black in designing. In their true forms, neither black nor white are "colors", and are difficult to work with and to print. Adding just a bit of color to white-- I usually go with some yellow to make a cream, or a grey or blue for a cooler winter white-- allows you to add texture, color burn, and see the white in print. For blacks, I usually opt for a dark orange (brown), blue, grey, or, in the case of this week, a deep green-grey.
Where are my favorite places to find colors? Well, I love browsing the palettes on
ColourLovers.com or on
DesignSeeds. I also like to play with different combinations on the
Multicolr Search Lab. If I choose a palette from one of these places, I always change it to suit me. Usually this means making a certain color lighter or darker, adding or subtracting, or just using the images to inspire something completely different.
When I'm looking for inspiration, one of my favorite things to do is browse creative sites online. I am completely obsessed with wedding sites (I could spend hours on
Green Wedding Shoes!), funky home decorating sites, and
Etsy. I often see color ideas from images on those sites, so I'll pull up Photoshop, pull out my trusty eyedropper tool, and start pulling color. This week's palette came from one of these pictures, though for my life, I can't seem to find it! (eyeroll) I don't usually save the picture, but I keep a huge folder full of swatch ideas just waiting for further inspiration.
It's really important to me that my colors are in the proper gamut for printing. Basically, this means that the colors fit within the range of colors for printing-- generally (depending on your monitor's calibration-- another subject for another time) the colors will print true to what you see on the screen. Every printer is different, so the colors may show up brighter or duller depending on what printer you use. On my end, I want to do my best to make the colors as workable for printing as possible.
Photoshop has a cool helper for this-- first, when I'm picking my colors with the eyedropper tool, the color picker will show up with a little warning triangle to show me that my color is out of range. Additionally, after I'm working with the color (adding overlays, color burning, etc), I can select View > Gamut Warning and if anything is out of gamut, it will show up grey. It looks kind of like this:
If I see a ton of grey, I'll usually fiddle with the Hue/Saturation until it looks right. There are some colors, mostly bright, neon-type colors, that I have a hard time working with, so I tend to stay away from those.
That's about it for my color story today. I'll be back with some new layouts tomorrow and a sneak peek of my new kit on Wednesday, along with a chance to win it for free! Woo!
Happy Monday!
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