It’s All About Color
Everybody has an opinion when it comes to design. If you have a favorite color, then you have design preferences. And even if you don’t think you personally have design ability, what could be more fun than a bit of “do-it-yourself” color?
When I’m setting up a community site for somebody or customizing a profile, selecting the “right” colors is always critical. If a brand is well established, then key colors have already been selected by the client and those are a great starting point. For the web, though, you still need to choose additional harmonizing colors for font, link text, border lines, etc.
You can take random stabs with the color selector inside the program you’re using or you can plan ahead a bit using an online color selector such as the one found here: http://cloford.com/resources/colours/500col.htm. I like to look at the whole palette of available colors and then pick the 5 or 6 that I like together and I jot down the hex values (html color notation) so I can insert them inside the program I’m using. Cloford.com has a great one because they list the color name, hex value, RGB value, and Microsoft Access code number—so whatever tool you’re working inside you have what you need. Take a look, it’s like choosing paint from swatches at the paint store. Have fun!
A side-note about fonts. I recommend keeping your creativity in the realm of colors. Getting too fancy with fonts is not such a good idea for the web. There’s a proven range of fonts for the web (all sans-serif and easy to read). Some examples you can’t go wrong with: Verdana, Arial, Futura, Helvetica, Lucida, Optima, Palatino, or Univers.
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