Color… A Critical Element of Design

Last week I focused on typography and it’s impact on design as an element. This week I want to focus on color. Most college-educated designers took a color class of some kind. So we all know the importance of color. I struggled with color in some of my classes and projects.

Now I look outside of the box for solutions to my color conundrums. The web has so much to offer in the way of color and inspiration. I still prefer my small library of books for a break from the computer though. (In fact I think computer glare is hurting my eyes more and more these days and I’m at least 2 feet from my computer screen.) I guess this means I’ll recommend a few good books to help with color and design and then move onto a few websites.

Color Design Workbook: A Real World Guide to Using Color in Graphic Design
by Adams Morioka
ISBN: 1-59253-433-3

Color Index 2: Over 1500 New Color Combinations. For Print and Web Media. CMYK and RGB Formulas
by Jim Krause
ISBN: 1.5818.038.7

Color Index: Over 1100 Color Combinations, CMYK and RGB Formulas, for Print and Web Media
by Jim Krause
ISBN: 1.58180.236.6

Color – Messages & Meanings: A PANTONE Color Resource
by Leatrice Eiseman
ISBN: 0.971.4010.6.3

Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color
by Leatrice Eisemann
ISBN: 0.966.6383.2.5

Flickr – search great photos and you will find inspiration for colors. I will show you on Friday how to take these images that you find colortastic and create your only color schemes and swatches.

Behr – there are a lot of great features on this sight for learning about color and using color and most importantly you can use the ColorSmart  feature to select colors and find palates based on that color.

Tune in later in the week for more sites that cater to color schemes and swatches.

TGIFree – Fonts

I frequent a few sites for those great free fonts.  The newest of the bunch offers all free fonts licensed for personal and commercial use.  Font Squirrel focuses on the fonts that would be most used in commercial print. I C this from their site:

“Free fonts have met their match. We know how hard it is to find quality freeware that is licensed for commercial work. We’ve done the hard work, hand-selecting these typefaces and presenting them in an easy-to-use format.”

It really doesn’t get much simpler than that either.  Check them out and offer up new fonts form them to consider.

I want to end this week of Type with a another freebie that will help keep the Fontdemonium under control.  FontExplorer offers more than FontBook (For Window’s users, i’m not sure if there is any type of font management software. If there is let me now). For me the features that have me using over FontBook:

1. Activation of Fonts – It just makes things easier to have the option to activate fonts that you need as you need them so your not keeping 2000 fonts active all the time.

2. Information feature for each font – this feature allows you to view all the information on the font, including all the characters and the keystrokes that will create the character.

3. Last imported folder – the first thing I want to do when I import a font is place it in the folder(s) it belongs, so in the future it will be with similar fonts when I’m searching for something specific.

Individual Character Information

Because of its growing popularity among the design community as opposed to Suicase (the former biggy in company font management), FontExplorer is moving away from their free version. You can still download the free version of FontExplorer, but please note that the company no longer provides support for the program and it will never have a new upgrade.

And for the sake of thoroughness, I researched their new FontExplorer X Pro.  For $79, you get a number a features including Application Sets that auto-activate when the application is opened, several new tools that allow for easy cleanup of font caches in both the operating system and individual programs and lastly with the addition of their font server, FontExplorer X Pro offers easy integration into a server for managing the vast number of fonts a company may store for several designers to use.

Other great font sites:
DaFont
FontSpace
BittBox
1001 Free Fonts
Urban Fonts

Random sites that I found on google:
Free-Fonts
Simple The Best Free Fonts
1001 Fonts
Font Freak

Feel free to add to the list.

March Calendar

The first of the month brings the need for the calendar to be changed over to the upcoming month. Thanks to the generosity of local paper vendors, I have a ‘lovely’ green three-month calendar on my wall. But I rarely look at it. Instead I rely on my trusty desktop wallpaper calendar.

Smashing Magazine, a great tool for all those serious web designers, complies a large group of well-designed calendars for your computer’s desktop. The collection for each month contains a variety of styles for all types of tastes. As you can see with the samples, there is everything from photo-based, illustration, typography, and heavy photoshopping.

For those of you who need an extra, no boundaries project, you to can submit a design for the next month. Check out mine for this month, as well.

Smashing Magazine, as I mentioned before, is a great resource for web designers, especially those who code. I will admit that since I don’t code and well don’t know much about web design at all, most of their articles are passed over by my eyes. However, they do feature great freebies for all types of design. You will see their link posted on most of my TGIFree posts. In fact, I found most of my freebie sites through one of their many collected links for various freebie topics.

Well the plate maker is done, for now at least and so is this post. I now send you to go explore all Smashing Magazine has to offer.