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Guest Post - "How I learned how to choose color for websites from a 10yr old"

Color is your friend. It can also be your enemy. Color is what makes a site pop and what gives it that special touch. But, too many colors (or the wrong colors) on a website can overpower it – make it look cheesy. I have always been a bit ‘Type A’ and always had to double and triple check on color wheels, and with everyone I know whether or not color combo’s work. Not only was it time consuming, but it was frustrating. But, this story isn’t about me and my color issues; this is a story about the greatest color advice I have ever received. The advice wasn’t from a designer, or a marketing expert, or even someone with experience. The greatest color advice I ever got was from my 10 year old niece.

Here’s the story:

Last Christmas, we were all together and she asked me if I wanted to color with her, of course I said yes, so I went to grab her crayon box. Before I could, she told me to wait and she would get it. Rather than taking the whole box of 196 crayons with her, she grabbed about 8 and left the box on the counter to come sit down next to me. My curiosity got the best of me and I asked her how she picked the colors she was using. She looked at me, a little confused, and said, “I like them. And they match.” Now, I am staring at a burnt orange, a pastel yellow, a couple tones of red, a deep green, black, indigo and a teal/turquoise. Problem? As creative as I am, I cannot see any world in which these colors ‘match’. I should add, we were coloring pictures of flowers, so I was especially confused by the color choice. But, she was adamant, so I didn’t argue. About an hour of coloring flowers, I actually took a look at what she and I had created and was shocked. The picture looked fabulous! It was not the colors I would have thought for flowers, but they worked. They didn’t work because of a color wheel that told her so, they didn’t work because of some formula that told her they were ‘pleasing colors’. They worked because she went with colors that she liked, that fit together for what she wanted. She made the colors work.

So, the moral of the story:

Next time you are stuck trying to pick colors for a website, take a step out of the ‘crayon’ box and pick colors that you like, that work for YOU. You’d be surprised at what your own eyes and creativity can choose.
I would like to thank Kirsten Wright for writing this wonderful article.