A Rainy Day Of Rainbows: Colors And Website Design

There's more to websites than just images and text. Awebsite is a marketing tool, representing the company, owner, employeesand products. Beyond that, it is a personality. A website is apersonality? Yes. It portrays a positive or negative symbolism and/oremotion.

In a face-to-face meeting our bodies and faces portrayunspoken meanings. We smile, gesture, laugh, and become nervous. It'sthese little nuances that help us communicate. A website does exactlythe same thing. The difference is: a website does it with color. Colorsthemselves contain a cornucopia of meaning. They can make us happy,sad, angry, comfortable, nervous, and even trusting. While it seemssimple enough to choose a graphic and then design a site around thatgraphic, you may unintentionally be presenting a derogatory impression.The colors may contradict the content in unintended ways.

Colors and their meanings

Green and white work well together, but in Japan a white carnationsignifies death, and a green hat in China means a man's wife ischeating on him. A green hat with a white carnation in the brimwouldn't be a good choice for a company logo. However, green is theeasiest color on the eye; it has a calming effect, which is why it ismost used in hospitals. It relaxes the patients. Different shades ofgreen have different meanings: yellow-greens are the least preferredcolors by consumers.

Red has been shown to increase blood pressure and heart rate.People working in a red environment work faster, but they also makemore mistakes. It increases appetite, restlessness and nervous tension.Creating a site with bright red and bright blue is a very poor idea!Bright red has the longest wavelength and bright blue has the shortest.When viewing these colors the human lens has to adjust to focus, and ittries to focus on both. This tires the eyes very quickly and will givethe viewer a headache.

Websites that contain different shades of blue, or ablue-and-white combination, tend to be more popular. Why? Bluerepresents calm, stability, hope, wisdom and generosity. Peopleinherently trust blue websites faster. Add blue text and people willretain more information from your site. Combine blue, purple, and whiteand you have nobility.

Thankfully, you do not see many yellow sites. While yellowcan increase concentration, it is the hardest on the eyes. Paint a roomyellow and you will make babies cry and adults lose their temper. Thenumber one attention getter, yellow is a very spiritual, eye-catchingcolor, and when used in small amounts it is very inviting and cheerful.Forget blinking animations; just use a small, nicely designed yellowgraphic.

Let's talk orange for a minute. As a fruit, I love it. As acolor, I don't love it. It always reminds me of Jell-O, and thatreminds me that the EEG of Jell-O is the same as the human brain.Orange does have its pluses though. It tends to make more expensiveproducts seem affordable and suitable for everyone, almost like anatural sales pitch. Brighter orange is hard on the eyes and is notrecommended for text or background images. Small amounts of brightorange can help create a "fun and interesting" site.

Action and Reaction

Color affects how we feel, our perceptions, and our interactions. Avisitor has already made a conscious choice to visit your site, now youhave to keep his or her interest. You have between 8 to 10 seconds tovisually appeal to the surfer. Through color you can make a surfer feelwelcome, comfortable, relaxed, and trusting. If you take existinggraphics on a site and change the color, you change the way the site isperceived, thus changing a person's reaction.

Taking a water-based product and placing it on a purple ororange site decreases marketability. Purple and orange are notimmediately associated with water or nature and will give the site andproduct a "false" impression. Placing that same product on a blue orgreen site will increase the desire for that product. While wenaturally associate water with the colors blue and green, not all sitedesigns adhere to this thought process. Sites that are nature relatedreceive better responses when multiple colors of green are used thenany other color or combination.

Multi-colored sites, or "rainbow sites," have the lowestvisitation time. This is not the case if the site is predominantlywhite, while displaying only small amounts of various colors. As themultiple colors decrease, the time of visitation increases. Sites aimedat children, such as toy sites, often use a wide range of color to"entertain" the visitor. While this is smart marketing, displayinglarge quantities of multiple colors decreases the "fun" aspect as theeye tries to focus and concentrate on the overly busy page. A smartrule of thumb when using multiple colors: do not use more than 5colors, keep them either "warm" or "cool," and make the backgroundwhite. Fun is more fun when it is easy on the eyes.

Warm and Cool Colors

Warm colors are based on yellows, oranges, browns, yellow-greens,and orange-reds, colors commonly associated with fall or autumn.Generally, warm colors tend to be more exciting and aggressive. Manypeople prefer them in small doses. Purples and greens are intermediarycolors, being either warm or cool, depending on how much red or yellowthey contain in relation to blue. If the color contains less blue thenit is more likely to be a warm hue.

Cool colors are based on blues, greens, pinks, purples,blue-greens, magentas, and blue-reds, colors more commonly associatedwith spring and summer. Cool colors are soothing, calming colors andtend to be more popular than warm colors.

Warm and cool

Creating a site with a combination of warm and cool colors confusesthe viewer. It will often make the site seem busy, dirty, anduntrustworthy. Site designers do not always realize that their colorcombinations are warm and cool. The use of a color wheel can behelpful, as it shows the Primary (red, yellow, and blue) and Secondary(orange, green, and purple) colors. Combining two primary colorscreates secondary colors. All colors are made from some combination ofwhite, black, and the primary colors.

What does all of this mean to site designers? If you want yoursite to be marketable, remember that there is more to it than justgraphic placement and text. Every color tells a story, and it may notalways fit the one you are trying to portray. In informational design,distinguish functional color from decorative color. Decorative colorenhances the layout by making it more aesthetically appealing, creatinga mood, or establishing a style. Functional color conveys informationexplicitly.

Last, but not least, a few rules of thumb

Make sure the choice of colors for a site fits the intendedcontent, and the users' expectations. Never use more colors than arenecessary. Do not use colors that do not support or add to theinformation being displayed. Remain consistent throughout the site withyour color choices, and leave the rainbows for rainy days and forchasing pots of gold.

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