Choosing the perfect Colors for your Website

Understand Your Color

When designing a website choose colors wisely. Your choice of colors for your website should mirror the message and feeling you to hope to communicate to the viewer. Let's take a look at some colors and what they mean to you and your website.

Black - the color of sophistication
Black speaks to power, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, mystery and style. Black can make color burst from the web page. It is a natural classic color and never goes out of style. Too much black can darken a mood and affect emotions very easily. When designing for a gallery of art or photography, a black or gray background can be used to make the other colors stand out.

Negatives: Death, unknown, fear, dark, sad, threatening, wicked, morbid and dangerous.

Red - the color of passion
Red is the color of passion, strength, energy, fire, love, excitement, speed, leadership and power. When using red in your website design it is best to us it as an accent color. It is a perfect color for 'Special Offer' or 'Buy Now' buttons on websites and Email ads, as it attracts the eye.

Negatives: Danger, fire, blood, war, anger, stop, revolution, radicalism and aggression

Green - the color of nature
Green implies movement, nature, spring, fertility, youth, environment, money (US), good luck, safety and generosity. It is the most restful color for the human eye and it can improve vision. Green works well as an accent or secondary color. Use green to indicate safety. Olive green is the traditional color of peace.

Negatives: Inexperience, envy, misfortune, jealousy, illness and greed

Blue - the color of stability
Blue is a color of peace, harmony, tranquility, health, coolness, confidence, loyalty, conservatism, dependability and technology. Blue is a safe choice for most uses.

Negatives: Depression, coldness,obscenity, conservatism and winter

White – the color of purity

White represents cleanliness, purity, and spirituality. It represents life and marriage in Western cultures, but it represents death in Eastern cultures.

Yellow - the color of ideas
Yellow can convey sunlight, joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, wealth (gold), summer and hope. It is the brightest color and intellectuals love yellow.

Negatives: Cowardice, illness, hazards, dishonesty and avarice

Orange - the color of energy
Orange conveys creativity, confidence, balance, heat, enthusiasm, flamboyance and playfulness. Orange is very effective for promoting food products and children's products such as toys.

Negatives: Warning, danger and cheapness

Pink – the color of romance

Pink is the softer side of red. Pink is romantic, calming and feminine.

Top 10 Ways to Enhance your Creativity

by Diana Robinson, Ph.D.

Creativity is generally regarded as desirable, and something to be enhanced. With this view in mind, below are some steps to help the development of creativity. However, although creativity is often thought of as relating to the creative and performing arts, remember that can take many forms. The criminal can turn creativity to illegal use as easily as the artist puts brush to canvas. Do not assume, therefore, that creativity is good in and of itself. Like most forms of power, it can be used for good or for harm.

1. Insist on giving yourself daydreaming time.

Schedule it if necessary. During that time allow no shoulds or musts to intrude. Give your mind this time to float freely, untethered to tasks. Do not think of what you will be doing when this time is over. Allow yourself to gaze out of the window, stare at the clouds, daydream.

2. Be curious.

Ask why? How? How come? Don't accept easy answers if they don't make sense to you.

3. Ignore tradition.

Just because something has always been done that way, or used for that purpose, doesn't mean things can't change.

4. Play a game with yourself--or with others--in trying to find the most uses other than the obvious ones for every-day items like paperclips, bricks, anything that comes to mind.

Like most of these points, this will stretch and develop your creativity muscles.

5. Ask "What if?"

Pick one aspect of an ordinary situation and imagine what would change if that one aspect were different. Follow this through in all its implications.

6. Read science fiction.

Allow yourself to become immersed in the worlds it depicts. Contemplate impossible things and parallel universes. The Queen of Hearts advised Alice to believe one impossible thing every day before breakfast. It was good advice.

7. Accept your initial ideas without judgment.

Give them time to grow and develop before you test them. Butterflies that have just emerged from the crysalis have wet, crumpled wings. Give them time to develop before you decide if they can fly. The reason brainstorming has become such a standby when group creativity is involved is that all criticism is put on hold during the initial idea-generating phase. Allow yourself the same freedom.

8. Take risks.

It's okay to be wrong. By definition, to be creative you must consider new, and therefore untested, ideas. Einstein said that he could have ninety-nine ideas that were wrong before he got the one that was right.

9. Enjoy the PROCESS of creation.

Do not focus on the result. The secret and ecstasy of creating is being in the flow, of losing yourself in the process. If you constantly break the flow to check to how the final result will look to others, to ask yourself, "Will it sell?" "Will it win?" you will subvert the process and possibly damage your creation.

10. Go ahead and DO IT!

Don't wait for the perfect moment, it won't arrive. Painters paint, scrape the paint off and paint again. Writers write and delete. They don't wait until they can do it perfectly before they start. You do not need twelve sharpened pencils and perfect silence before you put pen to paper. Remember that Shakespeare wrote in an age when the whole family sat at the same table and shared the same oil lamp. It is unlikely that he had a separate study or could wait until the family had gone to bed in order to write. You CAN follow your muse.

About the Author

Diana Robinson, Ph.D., Personal Development & Business Coach, who offers two free e-zines and/or a half-hour of free coaching by phone. She can be reached at Diana@ChoiceCoach.com, or visited on the web at http://www.ChoiceCoach.com

The Top 30 Dreameaver Shortcuts that Save You Time

Dreamweaver is a very powerful webpage creator. Using Dreamweaver can help you save time when designing a website. Built in FTP, website testing, link checking and validation are just a few of the program’s powerful time savers. Why not save even more time and take a look at these powerful keyboard shortcuts?

For those of us that like hard-coding our designs, these shortcuts will still save us plenty of time.

9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design

- In Designing by Collis

Web design can be deceptively difficult. Getting a design that is both usable and pleasing, delivers information and builds brand, is technically sound and visually coherent...

Read more>>

8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad

As everyone knows, graphic designers are the reason there are so many wars in this world. They get inside our heads with their subliminal advertising, force us against our will to spend money on the worst pieces of shit, and eventually, drive us to depression and random acts of violence. And of course, most of them are communists.

So to do my part to save the world from them, i made a list of things you can do when working with a graphic designer, to assure that they have a burn-out and leave this business FOREVER.

Read the 8 Ways here: http://groy82.blogspot.com/2007/03/8-ways-to-drive-graphic-designer-mad.html

How to Boost Your Creativity

20 Tips from Psychology for Boosting Creativity

By Kendra Van Wagner, About.com

According to cognitive psychologist Robert J. Sternberg, creativity can be broadly defined as "...the process of producing something that is both original and worthwhile" (2003). Creativity is all about finding new ways of solving problems and approaching situations. This isn't a skill restricted to artists, musicians or writers; it is a useful skill for people from all walks of life. If you've ever wanted to boost your creativity, these tips can help. Read here>>