Green meaning

As is fairly known I’m a little on the obsessed side to do with the meaning behind colours, so lets have a look at what green means:

Green is the color of nature. It symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and fertility. Green has strong emotional correspondence with safety. Dark green is also commonly associated with money.

Green has great healing power. It is the most restful color for the human eye; it can improve vision. Green suggests stability and endurance. Sometimes green denotes lack of experience; for example, a ‘greenhorn’ is a novice. In heraldry, green indicates growth and hope. Green, as opposed to red, means safety; it is the color of free passage in road traffic.

Use green to indicate safety when advertising drugs and medical products. Green is directly related to nature, so you can use it to promote ‘green’ products. Dull, darker green is commonly associated with money, the financial world, banking, and Wall Street.

Dark green is associated with ambition, greed, and jealousy.
Yellow-green can indicate sickness, cowardice, discord, and jealousy.
Aqua is associated with emotional healing and protection.
Olive green is the traditional color of peace.

- Color wheel pro.com

My own personal evocations from the colour green hark back to nature. I see it as a calming colour – to a certain extent depending on tone. I also tend to prefer the yellow / brown tones of green rather than a bottle or forest green. I don’t tend to like a green colour with a lot of blue such as aqua either.

Green to me is a good colour to work with a muted palette but also great as an accent colour for instance with lime. It is also a warming colour in certain tones so makes a design welcoming but also easy to read. It works in dark and light tones – part of the appeal is it’s flexibility.

The problem with a favourite colour

To a certain extent having a favourite colour as a designer can be limiting and also narrow your vision. You have to be open to seeing the potential in any colour. Often you aren’t in control of the entire design brief your client gives – what if they want a red and blue site and you don’t like those colours? I tend to see the value in any colour as if you use tones even the most troublesome colour on the web can be tamed.

Preferred tones

I tend to prefer muted tones with a strong colour as a highlight if anything. Most of my designs reflect this even if using a range of colours. However, just like with colours you have to be open to extending beyond your personal safety zones and explore tones and colours you may not like. Sometimes the most successful designs come from extending beyond your boundaries.

My eyes are burning

Not all is lost though as there are many ways you can work within a colour scheme to make it work better. Firstly, don’t go with your ‘argh’ gut reaction and think about the fact that most colours will go if you use hues / tones and choose carefully how you are using them. The first port of call is thinking about using a problem colour as an accent rather than a main feature. After that you can see about using neutral colours to unite the scheme. Using the colour scheme over the site’s design elements is a way you can make the scheme easier to view. Think about using tones of grey, black and white – this could be warm or cold tones. By using neutral colours as a tone you can link in elements. By adding these few simple methods you can balance out the problem scheme.

Spread the clash about

Aside from the colour scheme itself you can think about adding other things into the mix such as photography. By picking an image you can either add contrast so it balances or reduce the impact of the grating scheme. This is something you have to do carefully, a busy colour scheme won’t be made less busy by using a busy image – that just ends up in a whole load of busy. One method that you may not think about is to use a background for the site. Sometimes, by doing this you level out the design and make the stronger elements sit back. A background transparency over a colour can reduce the problem and you could also try using the grating elements in a background to move out of the design itself and divide up the colour scheme. Gradients can also be used subtly to use the scheme colours but in a more suggested manner than blocks of it. You can also look at the layout itself of the design. By using the colours in focal points you can break up the colour scheme that clashes. The biggest one of these is by using whitespace itself, whitespace can easily let the colour scheme breathe and become less glaring.

It’s never ‘that’ bad

As with anything, there is often a way in design. A lot of professional design is about making compromises. Yes, we’d all love to work on projects we only had control of and those ones are the lights at your tunnel ends. More often than not with corporate branding already done you have to work with an existing logo and colour scheme. By using simple design techniques you can reduce the problem this scheme may cause. I’ve done it, we’ve all done it as designers; that time when you proclaim out in toy throwing over a colour scheme. It’s good to remind yourself though that as with any design you will end up doing something for it, even if you do have to bash your head against it for a while. As with any design for a client it’s about getting the best possible result for them and doing the best you can in the constraints, you can just make more room in those constraints with some simple colour swiss army knife techniques.

Design

• Colour schemes :
  In 2007 I think that natural tones will be seen more and more as the primary colours of the web 2.0 unicorn are muted into tone combinations. It’s sort of ironic where you see something that is so man made such as the web turn to nature, but I also think it’s a natural process (excuse the pun). I think the web will get lighter as we see more and more subtlety in colours. This is in some ways a reaction against the dark that seeped through the web this year.
• It’s in the details :
  From the recent surge in use of icons, this will lead to things looking better when you microscope it – every part of the site is now seen as important and this will be seen in a surge of attention to the details of the web.
• Return of the true minimal :
  There has been slowly over the last year a simmering down in design as more minimal elegant designs are seen where less is the focus and more is put out with the old wrapping paper.
• Text that does things :
  Shaun Inman recently showed in his new design the colour of the text fading and the page getting more transparent as time passes. I think in 2007 there will be a bit more of the static elements such as text having styles attached to them so they become more reactive to the site. Site with CSS can be enhanced easily and this is one area that people have just left to the same font, maybe header in the past.
• Originality isn’t a swear word :
  After the attack of the web clones from web 2.0, I see a back lash against the glaze of this and everything having the same thing attached to it. I am not saying web 2.0 is over (as you know I am not ever sure it began and isn’t just marketing speak), it’s just that it might be going to school now and as such has become more individual and refined in it’s design.
• Doing what it says on the Tin :
  Design has come to make much more sense now, FAQs are becoming not the main focus for having an understanding of how to do things on the site. I’ve seen more and more user interface design being required as the ignorance of design towards the market and users is built upon this year.

Web trends

• Giving users a choice :
  From scheme changers to dragging interfaces to customise your experience, designs are becoming more and more open to user choice. I think this will increase over this year as people are able to choose more and more their experience.
• Feeds to the masses :
  With the update of Internet explorer RSS and feeds are now able to more and more. Feeds have been known about by a large amount of online users but I’ve personally experienced a fair few that were not aware of it. This is changing though and I think more and more companies will also start using feeds to keep their customers updated.
• Thinning of the crowd :
  I said last year that a lot of the web 2.0 unicorn boom would see maturity and weeding out as the year went on. I think this will continue this year. I for one know from the range I began to play with in beta I now only use a handful. Nothing stays purely for novelty value in the long term – it has to be addictive / compelling and ultimately useful.
• Stick it to people :
  The new crack is finding an application your web junkies will suck their hours away with – from twitter to deliicious. 2007 will see more traditional websites seeing these features and incorporating them. This has started to happen and I think 2007 will see this take a faster uptake.
• UK gets blogging :
  Apart from small sections of the web design and development industry and some personal ones, the UK has been relatively slow on the blog uptake. 2006 saw a lot of press and fuss about blogging starting to happen in the UK. Before 2006 I often had to explain what the term meant and lately even the casual net users I’ve met are starting to know or at least have heard the word blog.
• More community, more caring – less corporate :
  Corporations have always looked for innovative ways to bolster their business and maintain their client base. I see more and more this happening with a pleasant return to higher levels of customer service. This return to customer caring I think in part does actually come from blogs. You get a bad service, you blog about it. Nothing like a blogger to give a company bad press. It’s not a dramatic efffect but it’s happened on more than one occasion.

Personal predictions

Well, these aren’t really predictions as most are going to happen.

• Moving onward :
  Moving into a house where I get a better office set up – finally.
• Focusing business :
  After my first year fully back with Logical Binary there is a lot to do and build on from this hectic time.
• New launches :
  I have a number of web based projects that are simmering and boiling next year onto the web. These are:
  • Collabwrite :
    An online writing collaboration application.
  • Daily Lister :
    This is where the Lister family (well Simon (husband) and me) take one image a day for a year. It’s a sort of experiment to get us both back into photography so anything could happen in that. It will be done from the 1st January until the 31st December and use a blog like format to show these images at Daily Lister.
  • So what do you eat? :
    This is a blog site that came about due to the diet requirements of both myself and Simon. He is unable to eat wheat, gluten or diary and couple that with my allergies to various foods we often get asked ‘so what do you eat?’ Hence the name and hence the blog. Simon is a great cook and I like to eat his food so this project is a joint one. 2007 is going to see both of us starting to work on projects together more.

There are a few more I am not going to talk about at this stage as I want to do them slowly over the year. The above ones are about the first quater launches so I am able to speak about them now. Collabwrite may not be that early but it’s hoped it will. It’s an exciting year planned out for me personally as I’ve wanted to do a few of them for a while and never had a chance so it’s about time on a number of them.

The blogs

I will go into this one a little bit later, but there are 2 other blogs that I see as needing much more attention this coming year. Earlier on in the year woofbarkwag got launched and it’s gone pretty well considering I’ve been slowly trying to build it up. It’s nowhere near what I want it to be and there are more and more things I can think I want to do with it almost every day. Logical Binary also as of November has a blog and slowly this will build up to include client resource information. I want to not draw away from this blog with that one but to more use it for the company Logical Binary.

The rejects

I am going to be closing down one project for now and that is quotethem.com. I never dedicated enough time to it and will be keeping the domain and coding so it’s more than likely to receive a life line at some point, it’s just not cutting it in my books. I will give a site a chance but if I don’t focus even a little on it then usually it means I’m not ready to do it or the time isn’t right for me. Sadly, this is the case with quotethem.

Diary of a website

I thought I wouldn’t miss out this blog from this round up and look to next year. There is a fair bit planned. I want to continue to build on the last year which was a good one for this blog. From getting into 9rules to working on the community side, Diary of a website has seen a year of growth and development.

There will be at least 4 new flavours next year as is the tradition around here. I learnt a lot through dog food eating and the now infamous for all the wrong reasons chocolate raspberry theme. Vanilla certainly taught me a lot and I hope I’ve applied that in the latest one Coconut. I’ve decided probably that Diary of a website will also get a new logo per flavour with the coffee bean staying to tie the site in. We shall see how this pans out. I am going to go through over the next few weeks each theme and link up all the new parts that have happened along the way – this will result in nothing being missed if you do choose a different flavour – before this was a slight issue.

Phew, take a lie down it’s going to be a bit of a year

I’d like to take this time to thank everyone who has come and supported this blog and me throughout the year. You are always welcome here and I hope you start using the community aspects that have come with Coconut and will continue to grow with new flavours. It’s been great to get to know those of you who have commented and I encourage more of you to join in with the discussions and other things on this site. I value everyone that comes this way so a big hug and happy end of year smile from me to you all.

I’ve always loved black and white when it’s used with one colour to create impact. I think it’s the photographer in me, might just be the designer. Colour is all around us and it often takes it being placed out of context to bang home with real power. I recall somewhere there being a study in food that was coloured various ‘unnatural’ colours. This of course, produced the result that even the most tasty food was seen as disgusting.

Think about red for instance, what does this mean to you? Fear, hatred, love, passion, anger? What about blue? Calm, sad, peace? Think about green, yellow and white – what do these colours mean to you? What emotions do you feel when you visualise these colours?

Our brains are wired from early years to see meaning in certain colours, to feel those colours deep in our consciousness. It becomes something that is just part of us. Of course, it can vary from culture to culture. This use of colour to create meaning comes from primal instincts where colours are signposts. Seasons produce their own palettes from spring to winter.

Colour is literally all around us, our perceptions of it may vary but you can’t escape it – you just have to open your eyes (sometimes you even see colour when they are shut).

TONES:

There are 2 missing off this list as they were 2 deadlinks and also 3 of the sites are missing as used mono tone for a colour (aside from the debate of these are colours).

The colour of beta then is blue and the tone is light. A bit of a change from the green and dark trend CSS Reboot and many sites have sported in the past few months. I am fully aware this is hardly a design quality test and it’s just a snapshot of 50 sites, but it’s interesting to look at groups of sites without focusing on the design elements and taking colour as the measurement. As these are beta when the colours were decided is not known, so if this is a current trend or not is for you to decide. This is not a scientific test but shows an interesting shift in colour trends which can be seen on the web. Blue has always been a colour associated with a lot of corporate sites and it’s starting to come back slowly to the web in general in various hues. There does seem a shift back to lighter colours on the web which is interesting as the balance between dark and light seems constantly to shift in web design.

Tis the season obviously to be colour blind. I will end up having to have a eye test at this rate due to colour eyeball searing. There always seems to be bouts of colour insanity with regards to websites. I know I can’t do the nice shaded minimal combinations all the time that I love, just a little thought for my eyeballs would be good.

I am probably being oversenstive due to tinsel induced blindness. Or is that I wish I was blind with what I’ve been working with today. At one point upon adding the photographs I had a whole rainbow on my photoshop. It was enough to make a grown woman cry.

Lately, I have been starting to use colour more. Thing is a balancing would be good rather than this corporate colour insanity. Someone should really tell people that having the brightest colour combination doesn’t maketh a branding.

A current trend seems to steer from this though. It seems currently it is not colours as such but hues. I myself subconsciously appear to have joined this fashion. Perhaps this is not the bad thing I am suddenly assuming though. As I have before stated now with the freedom from the web safe strict pallete the options have opened up. How much is dependent on what school of thought you follow. With this has come the move towards colours as accents and hues. This is simply because before designers could not use them and also to the fact that this is one way to make damn nice looking sites.

Traditionally the freedom was only beheld by graphic designers. The web designer almost a poor cousin half breed between geek and designer. Now though a web designer has been accepted as a true clan designer member. About time really. With this final recognition has come an increased confidence and exploration of web design as a form. To me it is a good thing and something I welcome (I welcome so much lately). There is a change in the bias and as a web designer you can hold your head up high and proclaim "I am a proper designer". The amount of times web designers were labelled by some uneducated thug as not "a proper designer" are fading. This can only be a good thing.

Colour is a very important part of design. There is no doubt about this fundamental rule. I am taking it to extremes at the moment. I think in part it is due to the web safe colours testment having been practicularly thrown out the window. Back in the old hex web safe blankey dark ages life was a lot simplier. That reduced choice still posed the odd colour quandry, but it didn’t last so long and certainly wasn’t as frequent. The main challenge was coming up with something new. Now the main challenge appears to be that of a child in a sweety shop.

I know there is a staunt number who stick by the web safe standing. I personally feel it is over if even to only be extended to the twin value palette. The days of hex fast do appear to be over. For me this appears to be one move that I am finding hard to make. It is not that I am not glad of the relax in regulations. I welcome it infact. The problem is that when you have been so long in the boundary of restricted colours; moving into the lush feast of colour choices can make you a little dizzy in the head. At least that is the result on me.

There was a certain stability about the old way. The new way is confusing and full of choice. It is probably just the way I feel today but deep down there is a slight hankering back to the old days. There is nothing stopping me from sticking to the old rules. Fact is though when it comes down to it the part of me that revels in the new choice wins. So, I guess there is nothing for it but to do the colour slide bar dance for a few more hours trying to get that perfect shade.

For instance, take a site you’ve slaved on and designed to a pixel of it’s life – we’ve all done them. Sites where you’ve fiddle with the shadiest of hues to get the perfect match. So, you launch the baby and all is well. Then, out of the blue your client contacts you wishing to change the colour and nothing else. They love the design just in lilac or bright orange. Of course, this will clash horribly with that perfect match you’d done on text, headers and anything else in the site. I have found you can almost place money on it being the most clashing / worst combination of colours too.

It’s nothing new and part of having a client. Just sometimes though you end up in the usual crying into your itunes libary pose. This follows or preceeds the coffee making and drinking rant to any who will listen. If I am working at home I find my dog works well for this ranting phase.