Creative State – Web Design and Graphic Design Edinburgh Leeds UK

I came across this handy tool recently called colors on the web. The site is dedicated to the use of colours in design, and especially web design.

The site features a colour wizard, colour wheel and contrast analyser.

Colour wizard

The colour wizard will generate matching colours schemes such as complementary, split complementary and analogous colours. It lets you submit your own base colour by entering a hex code, and it automatically returns matching colours for the one you selected. This is really helpful if you’re looking for a third colour to complement your client’s brand identity online.

Colour wheel

This is the tool for you if you’re at the point of no return and can’t find a selection of colours to work with. Click to spin the colour wheel and the website will return a selection of three random colors, randomized from some 16 million colours.

Each spin produces three different colors, that gives endless combinations (or according to the site 2 to the power of 70!)

Contrast analyser

This is a nifty little tool that helps to identify good colour combinations in line with accessibility. It’s something we’ve found to be really useful for website design

The colour visibility in the contrast analyser is calculated based on suggested algorithms from the World Wide Web Consortium (w3) and will calculate the visibility based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as recommended by the w3. There are two versions of the guidelines, version 1.0 which was presented in 1999, and Version 2.0 which is still a working draft.

For more information visit http://www.colorsontheweb.com/

Tags: Colour on the web, colour wheel, colour wizard, web accessibility

This entry was posted by Sarah on tuesday, november 11th, 2008 at 9:16 am and is filed under Design tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.