What effect do colors have on you?
You buy a sky blue shirt because that color goes well with your skin tone. You wait a month to have a new car shipped to you because you wanted it in “Cherry Red”, instead of the basic black one on the sales lot. And you very carefully choose the color of a new rug or carpet… after all, you have to look at it every day for many years to come.
And I’d bet you spend way too much time selecting just the right colors for your next design!
Why all of this focus on choosing the best color? Because you need a helpful color… one that pleases, encourages, excites, calms, warms… or just stands out.
Whether you’re choosing a color for prospective buyers or to attract a mate (LOL), color is power!
Continue reading below as Marc and I show you a couple of tools that’ll make it easy to choose design colors, whether it’s for your graphics or your home renovation!
CREATORPRENEUR TOOLS
Here’s a FREE tool that can help you choose an entire color palette or just a few colors that work well together:
Coolors
This color tool is so easy to use that it’s worth the few seconds it takes to pull it up online.
All you need to do to generate a color palette is hit the spacebar on your keyboard. Random color palettes will come up. Then you have a variety of options to look at different shades of each color, check the contract with white or black text, and drag a color next to another color.
But here’s the BEST part!!!
You can copy the HEX code and paste it into The Graphics Creator!
Use it in any of the color code boxes… change your background color, text color, text outline color, shape color, etc!
Of course, Coolors does have a Pro version ($3/mo), which adds a few features and removes the ads. Only you can decide… either way, it’s worth checking out!
Here’s a Coolors color palette… just happens to be similar to Laughingbird Software’s company brand colors which use blue and yellow/orange 🙂
LAUGHINGBIRD CORNER
Of course, you can always use the color tools accessible right inside the Graphics Creator. You can color edit in all of the graphics editing menus… Format Canvas, Text, and Image menu.
Here’s how:
- Slide your mouse over various colors and choose one
- Use the special color dropper tool
How to use the Color Dropper to Pick Colors:
First, click to highlight the object, background, or text you wish to change colors on.
Then select the small color dropper image by clicking on it. Now you can pick up a color from anywhere on your graphics canvas by clicking it… and will automatically drop that exact color onto what you have selected.
This is super helpful when picking up brand colors out of your business logo, or when matching the color of your text to a color in your background or image.
Watch the video to see how to use the color picker tool, along with some other cool tricks to modify the text:
CREATORPRENEUR TIP
How many colors should you use in your design?
When using colors in graphic design, there are important rules to follow.
The #1 rule is to not use more than 2 or 3 main colors in a design. Typically, this includes one or two main colors and one or two secondary colors.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t have other small areas of color as well… it just means they shouldn’t be noticeable. You might think it’s too hard to use only 3 colors, but take a look at how simple it can be in the image below.
As you can see, there are only 3 colors used. The brown text outline is used to keep the design warm and the natural green was pulled from the little green plant shown in the left corner.
Simple graphic design is best!
Hope you enjoyed the Creatorpreneurs newsletter!
-Marc and Lisa
P.S. -Join Laughingbird’s Facebook group for more tips and design know-how!
