Strong
colours
Bright, strong colours
draw the eye. Use them to divide the page
into clear sections, and to highlight important elements.
When you have a simple, stripped-out
design, you can utilize a little intense color to facilitate
differentiate areas of real-estate and to attract attention to the
things that you want the guest to see.
The Treo Mobile site
uses 3 areas of strong colour to mark out and advertise 3 main areas of
the site.
The background colour makes it clear
that this isn't main content, and large, bold
title text helps you see quickly what's in each one, so you can decide
whether it interests you.
Colorschemer
sections the page with bands of intense, bright, cheerful colour, set
against a more neutral background.
Apple's
design has always used a great balanced combination of tone
(darks), rich effects and colour to draw the eye.
It may be the most perfectly designed
web site there is, in my opinion.
In this image, the strong dark areas
and strong color are utilized carefully topick out
important content.
Colour is also a great medium for
communicating brand values
Here, the colour isn't bright, but it
is strong, partly because of the amount of green used.
This design uses green to communicate
the values of "quality" and "health".
Note: site design
doesn't match this image!
This site sells outdoor clothes
exclusively for females, and the soft colours reinforce the chosen
brand personality.
Be careful to use intense colour on
or around high-value features
A nice, effective page design is
compromised by the use of large areas of intense colour outside
the main page area.
The result is that the eye is drawn away
from the real content.
The
Aurum Newtech site risks the same effect, but the colour is
just pale enough to keep the content noticeable.
In addition, the large, bold and
well-spaced content elements aid in drawing attention away from the
"good-looking" background.
Remember to use sparingly
If you're using strong colours to
attract the eye, it only works if there's lots of area that isn't
strongly coloured.
If everything
is trying to get the attention of the users, then the users would
become confused, and the website would feel puzzling and disordered.
