Fine painters will almost never use black. The pigment in black paint is very deadening and harsh, it's difficult to work with. It's much better to take the time and create dark hues from the rest of the color wheel. A standard exercise in color theory classes is to create black from the primary colors. Most people end up with brown, but a beautiful, rich black and nearby shades can be accomplished, and it's worth the effort.<p>It's an entirely different ball game though when you switch from a subtractive color system (which is what painting is, the primaries being cyan, magenta and yellow) to an additive one (which a computer monitor is, with the primaries being the well known RGB). In an additive system dark hues are only accomplished by removing light instead of adding pigment, so the problems a painter faces with black don't exist quite in the same way. So comparing website/app design to Monet is a tiny bit far fetched.<p>It seemed like a lifetime ago but I used to live and breath this stuff, even got a degree in painting. I guess it wasn't entirely useless :)
Nice post. Bookmarked and saved in my folder for great web design resources.<p>Although I'm not sure why anymore. No matter how much I try, my designs always come out horrible. Every time I ask someone for their opinion on a concept, they're first answer is, "Hire a professional designer."<p>Funny, I can visualize 9 layers deep into embedded code or enterprise data, but I have trouble with orange, purple, and all fonts.<p>FWIW, here is a list of the other links in that folder. Maybe they'll help someone else more than they've helped me.<p><a href="http://colorschemedesigner.com/#" rel="nofollow">http://colorschemedesigner.com/#</a><p><a href="http://websitetips.com/colortools/sitepro/" rel="nofollow">http://websitetips.com/colortools/sitepro/</a><p><a href="http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp" rel="nofollow">http://www.colorsontheweb.com/colorwizard.asp</a><p><a href="http://960.gs/" rel="nofollow">http://960.gs/</a><p><a href="http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/15-stunning-examples-of-data-visualization" rel="nofollow">http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/15-stunning-examples-...</a>
<i>There is still enough contrast as to be readable, but the contrast isn’t as harsh as black vs. white.</i><p>Still readable, yes, but I find the black <i>more</i> readable. Taking webpage design cues from schools of painting is a fine strategy as long as you remember that webpages have a different goal from paintings. This implies that everytime you transfer something from a school of painting to webdesign, you have to ask yourself "Does this principle undermine the purpose of a webpage?"
Here's a tip: Open a book. Any book. Note the color of the ink. Now use that color for your fonts and try to ignore the wankers trying to confuse art with information conveyance.
I'm a web/logo designer, and here's why this is wrong:<p>First off it's trying to apply the rules that dictate one medium to another. While certain basic principles often transverse mediums, this does not. They're trying to state that what works for blending colors in an art medium will work for trying to convey information on a content delivery medium. Remember though that in impressionist paintings the focus is on the lighting and the brush strokes, generally with an ordinary subject matter - or rather, the focus wasn't on the information, but on how it was presented. This is almost entirely opposite to what the web brings to the table - the focus is on the information, with the presentation being a way to best show that information. If you focus on the design over the content, you'll end up with a pretty site, but one that isn't functional. As programmers and hackers, all of you should know how well that ends up.<p>Also though, keep in mind that Monet was one painter out of millions using one style out of thousands. What about ink and wash paintings (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_and_wash_painting" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_and_wash_painting</a>)? Their entire focus is on the subtle and effective use of absolute black. Remember that there is no universal dos or donts in design, just guidelines. Saying you should "never use black" (or any color for that matter) is like saying you should never use X tool in your arsenal. You should never purposefully limit your tools, rather you should learn how to effectively use all the tools you have. Given the right conditions, even a goto statement can be the correct choice.
Color in a painting behaves quite differently than color on the screen. When dealing with a monitor we are looking at additive color, when looking at a painting it's subtractive. The more color I add on the screen the brighter the color becomes e.g., RGB 255 255 255 would be white. The more paints I mix together, the darker the color becomes.<p>The color wheel given doesn't describe additive color relationships. In RGB land, the complements for the primaries are generally given as follows: red cyan, green magenta, yellow blue. Please see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model</a><p>The reason that green and red "pop" is because we have the largest number of red and green cone cells in the fovea, that area of the eye responsible for our most central vision. Colors are not by default "cool" or "warm" they are only such in relation to context. We could have a "cooler" blue next to a "warmer" blue.
NASA's Ames Research Center has a great site called "Using Color in Information Display Graphics":<p><a href="http://colorusage.arc.nasa.gov/" rel="nofollow">http://colorusage.arc.nasa.gov/</a><p>It has articles, tools, a bibliography, even an entire section devoted to designing with blue:<p><a href="http://colorusage.arc.nasa.gov/blue_2.php" rel="nofollow">http://colorusage.arc.nasa.gov/blue_2.php</a><p>It's geared more for functionality than beauty, but that suits me fine. I mostly do web sites for other departments in my company, and clean, functional, and not actively unpleasant are all I need to deliver. They're also pretty much all I'm <i>capable</i> of delivering. Beauty is way beyond my abilities.
Black is very commonly used in art<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=brush+painting" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/search?q=brush+painting</a><p>Impressionists had they fancy rationalizations for why they didn't use black, but in my opinion, because of their painting technique and style, black looks dirty and smudgy.
I am not an artist, but my GF is. She never uses black and rarely uses white. Instead she uses two or three pairs of complimentary colors in a painting from a (virtual) color wheel with much more gradation than the one shown in the article. She uses the cool compliment for shadows, for example. The result, using a palate of only four or five colors, is a painting of surprising richness.
Wow, articles that are both readable and about design.<p>The typography examples didn't work for me, they're all black on white.<p>I use this quite frequently: <a href="http://colorschemedesigner.com/" rel="nofollow">http://colorschemedesigner.com/</a>
> As you can see on the left side of this example, the blue block recedes...On the right side of the example, you see the opposite effect, with the red block looking almost as if it is a tower extruding towards you from the blue block.<p>I see the opposite, with the red block receding and the blue block extruding. What does that say about me?
What is the best color background for showing photos or videos? Flickr is white, for example, but some other sites use black. Is there an optimal choice?
Nice link. For the past year of so I've been keeping up with design blogs and trying to do most of the art and design I need on my own.<p>a hacker's mindset leads surprisingly well to design, and I think the design side of my brain has helped in my coding.
That's a really nice explanation, and although I wasn't sure about the effect when I saw the orange square on the black background, the text hierarchy example is fantastic. Duly noted and voted!
When I got to the part about "Warm Colors Pop, Cool Colors Recede", I was startled by the text. My eye had already been drawn to the figure, and for me, blue popped and red receded.