Color

January 22, 2023 | 0:03:33

Color

Created: January 22, 2023

Timeline




	00:00	(Beginning of video)

	00:00	This video is about color.

	00:02	Like style, color evokes certain feelings.

	00:04	So you don’t want to choose a color scheme that conflicts with your topic.

	00:09	For example, the wedding rodeo flyer.

	00:10	There are other things wrong here of course, but one big one is the pastel colors don’t communicate the correct message.

	00:17	First, let’s look at choosing a color palette.

	00:20	Of course, if you’re creating something that’s going to be branded, you’ll probably just be using the colors specified by the organization.

	00:25	But, if you’re choosing colors, I’ll show you some tools you can use.

	00:29	One of my favorite tools is Adobe Color.

	00:32	So if you go to color.adobe.com, you’ll see a few different ways to choose colors.

	00:37	On the first tab, you have the Color Wheel picker.

	00:40	The color in the middle is the base color, so you’d start by choosing a color you think will work well for whatever you’re creating, or just one of your favorite colors.

	00:48	I really like orange so that’s what I’ve put here.

	00:51	And I’ve selected Split Complementary for the color harmony rule.

	00:55	You can experiment with the other options.

	00:57	I like split complementary and triad.

	01:00	You can also upload a picture and get different colors from the picture, and in different themes, or moods.

	01:05	For example, here’s a picture with both colorful and dark color moos.

	01:09	This is a great way to create consistency and unity in your course, of course, assuming that the picture you’re choosing colors from is one that’ll be in your course.

	01:19	These are a couple other tools for color palettes.

	01:22	The first is colorhunt.co, which has some ready-to-go color schemes you can use.

	01:28	The second one is coolor.co (all o’s).

	01:32	With this one, you can generate a bunch of different color palettes until you come across one you like.

	01:36	Alright, now some tips, or just general rules to follow when it comes to color.

	01:40	Stick to 3 colors, or under.

	01:43	I know a lot of the color palettes will generate more than 3 colors, but keep it to three, at most.

	01:48	You can do less, but don’t do more without a good reason.

	01:51	You can still vary the shade within each of those three colors if you need more options.

	01:55	One easy way to vary color shades is, if you’re in PowerPoint, just change the transparency.

	02:00	For example, let’s say you have these two main colors, an orange one and a blue one.

	02:05	Going from left to right, I’ve just changed the transparency of each colored box, and you can see I’ve essentially created several different shades.

	02:11	And this is not including black and white and the grays in between.

	02:14	Shades of gray tend to go with everything.

	02:17	Next tip, stick to light backgrounds for long text.

	02:21	Dark text on a light background is much easier to read than the inverse, as you can see with the two examples on the right.

	02:27	So I wouldn’t have more than a few lines on a dark background.

	02:30	Also, dark backgrounds can look a little dated.

	02:33	Check your text contrast.

	02:34	If the text color and the background color are too similar, it’ll be hard to read.

	02:38	Fortunately, there’s very little guesswork involved since you can just use a color contrast checker.

	02:43	For example, there’s one on the Adobe color site.

	02:46	As you can see, the white text on this teal-colored background has too little contrast for normal body text, but it’d be okay for large text and icons.

	02:55	Additionally, it’s tricky to get the requisite contrast on text that’s over an image.

	02:59	For example, with this forest picture, since there’s a lot of contrast in the background, when we overlay text on it, it’s pretty hard to read.

	03:06	So instead what you can do is add the text inside of a slightly transparent box.

	03:10	Then it’ll be much easier to read the text.

	03:12	And it can be a dark or light background.

	03:16	The trick is that it just has to be a solid color.

	03:19	My final tip to you is: say no to neo.

	03:22	I know some people are tempted by that bright green and black color scheme, but it rarely looks good.

	03:29	So resist the neon urge and find some other colors.

	03:33	The end.

	03:33	(End of video)


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