Meredith Design

One day I was sitting in my cube, working on a project that had me stumped. I needed to have each data sheet look similar but somehow be easily identifiable as different. So I played with the colors on each sheet… but I just couldn’t get them to coordinate well. I went to my creative director and,  per usual, she had a wonderful solution. Use kuler.

What is kuler? “Adobe® Kuler® is a web-hosted application for generating color themes that can inspire any project. No matter what you’re creating, with Kuler you can experiment quickly with color variations and browse thousands of themes from the Kuler community.” In my terms, it’s a palette generator! Back before I got into designing on computers, I was drawing and coloring on paper. What I usually did first when starting a piece was make little circles of color on another piece of paper to test how they would look. Sometimes I would freestyle it. That didn’t usually work so well.

To my issue- why are palettes so important?! I’m sure there are folks out there that don’t need palettes or theme guides to help them see the colors work together well. Some folks are gifted. Others, like me, just have to practice and practice. Maybe some day I’ll be so practiced that I won’t need to make a palette beforehand. Unlikely. So for us normal folk we can use different methods and tools to help us select the best possible color choices. Maybe you’ve just created a logo in black and white and you need to find the right set of colors for the identity. But not only must you coordinate with the logo colors, you also have to think about the colors used in the website, company clothing or accessories. Not to mention conveying the right feeling or vibe via the colors. And so, I choose to make palettes or color themes in all of my projects now. It just seems silly not to when there are such nifty tools out there like kuler.

With love- M