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When I set out to re-launch this site I was stuck for color ideas. Some people have a natural eye for color. Not me. I struggle with it. More often than note I think women have a better eye for color than guys. We tend to think five shades of blue is a color pallet. There are exceptions, of course. There are plenty of talented male web developers and artists of every kind who have no trouble finding the perfect color pallet. But if your like me you might find yourself needing inspiration.

Here are my 7 Sources for Creative Color Ideas

• Magazines - Look at the layouts and design of popular magazines. Let other designers do all the hard work!
• CSS Galleries - I’m sure you’ve seen these, but check them out with an eye for color ideas: CSS Vault, Stylegala, CSS Zen Garden, CSS Drive, CSS Elite, CSS Beauty and many more.
• Fashion - Color and texture are these peoples lives. Learn from them.
• Nature - No one does it better. Go out and take a look around. Trust me, they always match.
• Art - Check out Art.com, Art.org, Deviant Art or Digital Art. Aside from wasting hours, days and weeks browsing all the incredible images, if you can peel yourself away you’ll probably find yourself very inspired.
• Photographs - Photographs have a way of capturing color pallets, sometimes without even knowing it. This may go back to the whole nature thing, but photographs have a way of giving you ideas for color that you might not have expect. Keep that in mind and go browse Flickr. Find some pictures and use This tool to generate a color pallet for you.
• Paint Samples & Home Decoration - best kept secret in color pallets. Go to your local hardware store and stock up on samples. I’ve got a box of them sitting next to my desk. Don’t think about it, just go do it.

One of my favorite places to check out is Color Lovers, a cool web site with a web 2.0 kind of vibe that has plenty of color ideas and pallets that you can browse. Do a quick search on Google for color pallets and you’ll find more resources than you’ll know what to do with.

Even with all that help I went with a monochrome gray/white/black pallet. I plan on adding a pinch of color in the mix later, just haven’t decided which ones yet.

Do you have any great color tips? Leave them in the comments.

Technorati Tags: Web Design, Color Pallets, Color Ideas, Colors

I’ve been blogging in one form or another since before it was called blogging, even though I might not have known it at the time. I’ve been building web sites since 1997 and bough my fist domain (Lit.Org) back in 97. I bought this site (chrispian.com) in 2001 and have been blogging on and off here ever since on a wide range of topics. The last few years have been trying for me on a personal level (see my about page for details) and as a result my dreams of working on my own projects have been delayed. Things are getting back to normal and so its time to get back to business, starting with this site and working through all my ideas one site at a time.

The Past

I backed up all my old posts and removed them from the site. It’s time to focus. I also ditched the old design opting for something that felt a little more like me. It needs some more tweaking but think it’s a great start and once it’s cleaned up will become my “blank slate” for future theme development. The sidebar still needs some work so I’ll be tweaking it a bit here and there. Mostly just minor style tweaks and I’ll be adding some other little bits too like what I’m currently reading, recommended reading, popular posts here, other places to read my rantings, er, writings., that sort of thing. Most of the “personal” parts will be found in the lower parts of the side bar. I’ll also be offering a few spots for sponsors once things really get going again but that’s probably a ways off.

The Present

It’s time to focus. I won’t be giving much, if any space to my personal life on this blog anymore. Instead I plan on focusing on the things that interest me, like web development, programming, Wordpress, LAMP, making money, affiliate marketing and everything that’s part of working in web publishing for a living. I’m completely self taught and I’ve been doing it almost 14 years now and I love helping people. So that’s why I’ve decided to focus on that here. I’ll also touch on some related interests, like writing, blogging, photography, productivity, time management, tools of the trade and things of interest to people trying to make a living at this. Don’t get me started on taxes! ;)

The Future

Part of the change is to focus on my own projects. I’m self employed now. I work as a freelance consultant doing programming, design, project management, server stuff, etc. for a small group of clients. As much as I love that work my dream has always been doing what I do for them for myself. So I’m putting plans into motion to make that dream a reality. I’ll chronicle every step of the way and let everyone follow along and share in my success and failures along the way and maybe learn from my journey. At the very least this should be more interesting than hearing about the minutia of someones every day life, the details of which even I find boring and it’s my life.

Wrapping it up

Most of all I plan on having fun and sharing my passion for this internet thing with anyone who’ll listen. I don’t care what your skill level is because I’m sure there’s plenty we can learn from each other. To that end I’ll even open the floor to guest writers and have a specific column here where I’ll try to answer any web dev related question someone sends me and I get a bunch of them. I’ll get back to the guest posting in a few weeks once I’ve set the tone around here so people know what to expect but if you have questions, feel free to ask those now.

So, lets dispense with the formalities and get into it! I hope you decide to stick around.

Thanks,

-Chrispian