Is It Really That Green?
Color is one of the most important tool in a designer’s arsenal. As visual creatures, we humans respond to colors so much, whether it be the color of the next fashion garment or the color of the new leading website. For designers, it’s difficult to pick and coordinate the right colors for your design. Personally, I use Adobe’s Kuler website (http://kuler.adobe.com/) to help me decide on color swatches for my next design. It helps me look at colors together to see if they match well or not.
But one thing to think about as a designer is this: do we even experience color the same way? Is the way I see the color green the same way you would see it? Consider the fact that some people are born color blind. Chances are that not all of us are completely color perceptive, in that the amount of cones and rods behind our retinas could very well be idiosyncratic to each person. There could be something in my physiology that makes me see a greener green than you, in which case the designer would have to think about a more universal color to use to please most of the population.
One way I’ve found to control for this difference in my designs is to use gradients. So no matter how variant your color perception can be, the gradient remains universal. Plus, it adds a sort of depth into the design itself, making the colors a lot more vivid than using just one solid color.
So the next time you hear someone say their grass is greener than yours, don’t even stress. There’s probably just something wrong with their eyes.
