Three hours of shuffling colours and CSS and still not happy.

I'm burnt out

[killroy]

Just shuffled CSS properties for3 hours and I'm still totally happy with the result. Short of hiring a designer what can I do? I'd love some peer review, and hope you'll let me sticky you the URL.

*sigh* I'll sleep on it.

SN

[mylungsarempty]

proof-reading is a lost art, isn't it...

[killroy]

Yeah... that's the problem with working in isolation... Sometimes I'm thinking of hiring people just so I can show them the stuff I'm doing and dto bounce ideas off...

Oh well, back to staring at my screen some more.

SN

[Nick_W]

This link will save your life [colorschemer.com]

Nick

[Terrier]

Nick,
That is very cool, bookmarked instantly.

[pixel_juice]

I've found the tools at easyrgb.com very handy too :)

[richardb]

Kilroy

I'm not paying you, so take the day off, go to the pub -- live a little, come back when you got some inspiration ;)

mylungsarempty that was low

Rich

[dragonlady7]

I hate working alone. I'm awful at it.
But then, all I ever want is to be left alone when I'm working...
I'm stuck in a contradition, here. I need co-workers who'll be instantly available for critiques when I need them, but won't tell me to do anything else. :-)

Well, from my limited experience in the general art world, often the best thing to do to check color balance is to zoom in or something and make the colors you're thinking of be your whole world for a little while. Squint and check them for contrast (if you squint your eyes mostly closed, you reduce them to contrast, and can check it easily).
Then try doing some creative exercises like looking at the page sideways or upside down (works very well for paintings). Print them out or stand on your head, whichever suits you best.

I'm pretty bad with colors, which distresses me since I always thought i was pretty good with them. :-( So I'm struggling with this myself.

[waldemar]

As far as for colors (and the theories and usage) there is such an excellent site that I need to post it although it is in german. Maybe babelfish can help when german is not an option to you: [metacolor.de...]

[mylungsarempty]

hey i made a comment about proofreading... and it was innocent, really... i was referring to the first line, "Just shuffled CSS properties for3 hours and I'm still totally happy with the result." I just thought it was funny, leaving out the word "not", totally reversing the meaning of the sentence... I didn't mean anything by it, i realize there are a lot of people on here using English as a second language and what not. My apologies if it came across wrong.

[olwen]

I picked up a plugin for HTMLKit called SLUGS (Simple Little Utility for Generating Schemes) today. It is also comes as a standalone program. It is a lot of fun. I wasted a lot of time looking at colours. [opensourcepan.co.uk...]

[edited by: olwen at 9:21 am (utc) on July 13, 2003]

[jamesa]

Not to sound cynical but unless you're designing for designers or a rock band it doesn't matter. Go with a safe blue or blue/grey theme and accent sparingly with bright reds and yellows and even bright greens. Black on white for text. Badda-bing, badda-boom.

Or if you'd rather be less cynical, check out colormatters.com.

:)

[Dayo_UK]

I dont think that I am ever 100% happy with colour schemes - but you could go on tweaking for ages...

There must be someone you can call on for a second opinion - you dont need to be a graphic designer to know what looks good.

[killroy]

mylungsarempty> I thought you were referring to the missing space before "3" at first. Just goes to show how good our brains are at filling in missing information. I bet few even noticed the "not" was indeed missing and changed the meaning of the sentence radically.

Well the colours aren't my biggest problem. The site has "golden" in it's name so blues and greens are kinda out the window. The problme is more the balance of hte page. Often I find the little edge details draw your attention most, and you end up expending effort jsut to see the title that's smack in the middle of the screen.

I think I've got a better arrangement now, completely different from my last one too.

I'm also a bit stumped, as the page has to display several bits of info, some of which may be missing for certain pages, and I'm struggling how do modify the template for datasets that are in some ways incomplete. currently I'm thinking about leaving the spaces for the missing items, but I could also reflow everything.

Do any of you have perhaps general design/balance of page/white space distribute hints that we can keep for me and others to read?

Thanks for your insights.

PS: I know exactly what you mean dragonlady. "please jsut look at this. Ah... Hm... [go off to code for 30 minutes and then be surprised they have left already]"

SN

[oilman]

I don't really have much to add as far as advice - I struggle with the exact same problem all the time. I've spent countless hours shuffling objects around and mucking with fonts and colors and never quite getting the look I want partly because I'm not really sure what it is I want - I just know I'm not there yet. Lately I've started not caring so much - I'll mock something up and take it to the client and mostly they like it and we move on to the copy and so forth. Generally speaking as designers and developers we're our own worst critics. Most people don't even see the holes in our designs that drive us nuts.

I liken the whole process to mixing sound for a concert (which I do quite often). After the show I'll be talking to the band and we'll evaluate the show and inevitably we'll find issues with the sound balance or a song that they messed up on etc and start to get upset that we messed something up. The real truth of the matter tho is that 99% of the people sitting in the audience don't have the first clue what the song was supposed to sound like and have no idea we messed it up. Same thing goes for design - no one but you has that perfect picture in their head so when they look at the desigen they see what's there - we only see what's missing. It's a tough hurdle to get over. I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for perfection but most days 'it's good enough' will do.