Web page colors

When designing your site is important for you to stay consistent with your brand. The colors that you have in your logo and collateral should be also used on your site. It is also important to attempt to carry over elements of style and layout from your brand as well.

If you are just starting out and do not have a well developed brand, now may be the time to start thinking about creating guidelines for your business. The colors you choose are important decision because they can evoke a response in people both positive and negative for your business.

Check out a book called "PANTONE Guide to Communicating with Color" by Leatrice Eiseman - it provides great information on color combinations and the emotions tied to various colors.

There is great importance to building your own "branding"... in other words, using a color and style that is consistant with your current print marketing pieces and company identity.

It is also important to remember though, that web colors are different from print colors. While the reults can be similar, they will never truly be the same, since print inks consist of combining cyan, magenta,yellow and black PIGMENTS, whereas web colors are ceated from combining red, green and blue LIGHT, much like on a projection television screen.

There is a list of web-safe colors that produce a consistant and pleasing color. The list consists of 216 colors, so there are many to choose from. Other colors can also be created using this system of combining RGB values, too.

A designer well-versed in html and color-theory can help you decide on the best colors for your site, too.

I am not an expert like Andy or Rich but everything I have read and heard is that a web site should not be too colorful or "busy" because it can distract the visitor from seeing the important information, like the buy button! But, my site is extremely colorful and I get a lot of compliments on it. Of course since I supply full color printing I'm all about color. My feeling is to do what looks good to you. If your site contains the information or product that the visitor is looking for the site might as well look inviting.