Having recently painted our house, I can tell you from first hand experience that choosing colours isn’t as exciting as you might think.

Between the blank tins of white paint used as bases for mixing and swatches half the size of a credit card it’s pretty much up to your imagination to picture how the colour will look on a larger area like your wall or roof. If only paint came like this…

Love ‘em.

Not a real retail product unfortunately but rather a packaging design concept by designer Samy Halim. You can in fact buy interior and exterior paint directly from Pantone if you know the colour you want, if your headed to the hardware store however you’re out of luck.

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Pantone paint cans

Turquoise. A colour of deep compassion and healing, and a colour of faith and truth, inspired by water and sky. Read on for annual winners from years gone by.

2009, Mimosa. The colour yellow exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as humans are naturally drawn to for reassurance.

2008, Blue Iris. A mix of blue and purple that suggests dependability and magic.

2007, Chili Pepper. Chosen for its pizazz and sophistication and its hint of ethnic taste.

2006, Sand Dollar. A neutral colour that expresses concern about the economy.

2005, Blue Turquoise. Another reversal to a calming shade

2004, Tigerlily. Acknowledges the hipness of orange, with a touch of exoticism.

2003, Aqua Sky. A cool blue meant to restore hope and serenity.

2002, True Red. Recognizes the impact of 9/11 with a patriotic hue.

2001, Fuchsia Rose. A reversal from the previous year, more exciting, more feminine and sexy.

2000, Cerulean Blue. Chosen for the millennium for its calming zen state of mind.

What’s your vote for next year?

No love for green so far, perhaps a nice emerald for a healthy and prosperous year?

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0 to 255 is a simple, web based colour finder tool that allows web designers to instantly find lighter and darker variations of any colour, making choosing colours for gradients and hovers a breeze.

Created by web designer Shaun Chapman, the tool seeks to overcome the often awkward HSL colour picker system used in Adobe Photoshop. Instead, simply enter the base colour of your choice, and the sites returns 32 increments of the original colour ranging from white to black, like so:

A click of the particular colour that meets your requirements places the hex code into your clipboard, ready to be pasted into Photoshop, Dreamweaver, or the design software of your choice.

Quite the time saver.

You can find 0 to 255 here. Check it out, you’re sure to find it useful in the future.

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0 to 255. Colour finder tool for web designers

It’s amazing the things that people are able to overcome. With colour being used for communication so much in day to day life, let alone if your a graphic designer, I can only imagine some of the difficulties one might face.

With the Colour Add system, recognizing and even utilizing colour is now possible.

The system proposed is based on the search of the color, not the light color RGB Ð (R, red; G, green and B, blue), because the colorblind person does not possess the correct vision of the colors, nor a tangible knowledge of how their addition works.

The system proposed is based on the pigment colour, using as basis the primary colours: BLUE (cyan), RED (magenta), YELLOW.

In addition to primary and secondary colours, symbols for white and black allow users to expand their colour range into the dozens, as well as using shades of grey and specialty symbols for gold and silver.

Very intuitive.

I posted some an article some time ago on Logo designs not for the colour blind, looks like they can use colour after all.

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In order to promote the Pantone colour guide book to design students, Basheer Graphic Books commissioned this 8 metre Pantone rainbow consisting of over 5000 colour swatches, built by the agency Bates141 in Jakarta.

Pretty.

There wasn’t a whole lot of information on the project unfortunately, but interesting none the less.

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Everyone has their favourite colours, I have this… friend, who despite much ridicule is a big fan of pink. Posted on behalf of my friend, here’s a collection of pink logos to bring everyone around.

Love Factory Inc.

My Pink City.

Matthew Brian Brands.

Art 4 Time.

Safe.

Blushberry.

Pozzitiva.

Mermlets cleaning service.

Pink Unicorn Publishing.

What do you think?

Admit it, you secretly like it. Just like my, friend…

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Pretty in pink; Logo designs

There are a whole lot of colours out there, around 3000 solids if you believe the folks over at Pantone. But what do colours mean and which ones are best for your brand identity?

Without going into every possible hue, here is a basic guide on thoughts, feelings and emotions associated with colours.

Violet combines the stability and power of red. It is used to symbolize royalty, luxury, elegance, romance, mystery and magic. Violet is however rarely found in nature compared to the other colours, and can appear artificial at times.

Blue. Stability, loyalty, trust and tranquillity. Interestingly, around 70% of children aged 5 – 15 prefer colours in the violet to blue range over any other, something to keep in mind if your marketing to children.

Green stands for nature, health, wealth, safety and growth. On a less positive note the wrong shade of green can also imply sickness or jealousy.

Yellow. Happiness, light, curiosity, light heartedness and fun. Yellow can be disappear into white however is the first colour seen against black, giving it the potential for great impact, or very little.

Orange is associated with energy, warmth, endurance, enthusiasm and stimulation ( not the sexy kind, we’ll get to that in a minute… ). Orange yields almost the same power as yellow but without the vanishing act when used against white.

Finally red. The meanings of red vary from love, passion, sex ( told you we’d get there ), courage and strength to war, fire, blood, rage and death. A diverse and powerful colour.

Which colour is right for your brand?

Did you make the right choice for your brand? or is a change in order. Image credit.

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What colours suit your brand identity design?

While any good logo design must work in black only, many brands use colour extremely effectively to uniquely identify their brand.

While you might not think simply using, in these cases, yellow, blue, pink or orange would make one brand any more memorable than the next, I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t recognize the brands from these Comex advertisements.

Do any other brands come to mind?

I’m thinking Coca-Cola red, Cadbury purple, Twitter blue…

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I knew Pantone made more than just ink and swatch books, I’d seen a few bags and what not around the place. I just found these over at Fubiz, Pantone bags, badges, cups, shirts and even muffins.

If your looking for some design related goodies check them out, the sites in French but you’ll find a link to translate the page to English at the top.

So much to choose from.

Hopefully they do a button in my red.

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All things Pantone – Colourful accessories for graphic designers