Creating a colour palette 'the natural way'

by Hamish Long

I'm always excited about a brand new project when the client gives me free reign. One of the first things I create is a colour palette for the website. "Fresh and "vibrant" are words I hear a lot and with spring just around the corner (hopefully!) let's create a palette with a seasonal twist...

I find that good quality nature photographs offer stacks of inspiration so I've carried out a search in my stock photo library, www.photos.com, and found this great image of a yellow spring tulip in bloom.

I then open the image in a graphics application, in my case, Adobe Fireworks. Next I create four squares and use the colour picker tool to find a nice selection of colours from my tulip image. You might need more colours for your project but I find four gives me enough variety without over-complicating things.

 

As this website will not have colours bleeding into each other, I add a white border to my squares and overlay them so I can see how they sit together. I have duplicated the yellow square so all colours touch each other. I have also created a 40% opacity palette.

 

I can then start mocking up website layouts and colour combinations. You may be creating a palette for a different project - a slideshow presentation or a newsletter perhaps. It can be difficult to get started when creating a palette so I hope this technique of finding an image to match the mood of the project will prove useful.