Color choices matters!
Yes, Color choice matters. Each one invokes someparticular visual or emotion in those who see it. You canuse that in design. Let’s talk about how to create a user interface that takes full advantage of color selection. It’sone of those user interface design principles that should benefit your bottom line.
If you have a website or app that you’re creating for your company, then you need to think about user interface design basics. In particular, you should pay attention to your color choices.
Using appropriate colors a Necessity?
Color can set the basic mood, tone, concept, and connotation for a brand or product. Research conducted by the Institute for Color shows that users take about 90 seconds to assess the quality of online products. From 62% to 90% of all product assessments that people make are color-influenced on the subconscious level. It then follows that choosing the correct colors for your logo, brand, and product packaging should never be done on a whim.
Colors can speak in ways that are every bit as powerful as language. They can reflect the personality of your brand. They can attract users, and they can better communicate your message. Any UI Design guidelines are likely to mention colors prominently.
So, the color of language can also influence the purchasing decision. These days, color in UI design is a central part of any online marketing strategy.
Colors & Emotions
The red refers to what we call warm colors. Those would be red, orange, and yellow. These warm colors bring about emotions having to do with warmth and comfort. However, they might mean anger, hostility, or passion to some individuals as well.
The cold colors are blue, green, indigo, and violet. Some of the associations there are sweetness, quietness, trust, confidence, or contemplation.
There are differences in the perception of colors between genders. The research by Natalia Khouw on “The Meaning of Color for Gender” found that men like gray, white or black than women, and that women pay attention to the combinations of red and blue more frequently, and got confused and distracted more than men. That’s such brands as Mercedes the target audience of which is mainly man, create a website in a combination of black, grey, and white colors.
Color Schemes in UI
Analogous UI Color Schemes:
This term refers to colors that are grouped near each other on the color wheel. Variety in analogous schemes often comes from saturation and brightness shifts. They work better than major hue changes.
Complementary UI Color Schemes:
This is an option that is based on the interplay of complementing cool and warm colors. They work well when they exist across from each other on color wheels. For this technique, some handy tools exist like “Check My Color”, “Coolors.co”, and “Paletton”.
Designing in grayscale before you add color makes a complex visual element much simpler. When you do it, it forces a layout of the elements and a renewed focus on spacing. When you’ve done some workshopping, you can start by selecting a single brand color. Then, choose other ones that would be appropriate.
Brand Personality Matched with the Right Color
All brands have personalities. You should carefully think about your clients brand when you’re narrowing down your color palette. If the requirement is for the consumers to relate to the brand, you can’t have colors that clash with what you’re trying to convey. Research reveals that up to 85% of consumers feel the color is the most significant motivator in choosing a particular product.
Look at the personality of the brand before you commit to color combinations. Think about the gender of customers who primarily use your products. Consider the tone you are trying to convey, the value proposition that you are putting forth, and how long you have been in business. Do you want to seem new and exciting, or time tested and dependable?
You’re trying to understand the target audience as best you can, as well as the products you’re going to be selling to them. If you can do that, your chances are going to be better of landing on the proper color that can be emblematic of your business in the future. Your aim should be a simple UI design with colors that make sense.
Color Balance
It’s a mistake to completely walk away from color combinations when you are doing UI interface design. Avoid overload and chaos in your design and bear in mind that minimalism is always better in UI. These next two rules should help.
The first is 6:3:1, also referred to as the Golden Rule when choosing colors. The principle of 60% + 30% + 10% represents the best proportion for reaching balance with your color selection.
The second rule is Max Three Primary Colors. This one is an ideal way to avoid making the visual too chaotic. It allows you to keep balance, especially when you combine it with the Golden Rule.
Combinations and Complimentary Colors
Shades, Tints & Tones
Shadow should be used as a way of subtly enhancing your main design elements. Hues are what is needed to create variations using the color wheel. If you elect to add white, then a tint will be the result. You can also add black if you want a shade, or gray if you’re trying for a tone.
Brightness
Create dark color variants through increasing saturation and turning down the brightness.
Contrast
Strong contrast adds a sense of tension and gets the viewer to concentrate. Light contrast brings pleasurable, comfortable feelings. Use these if you’re going for a casual, relaxing design.
Interactive Colors Defining
Interactive colors are your tools of choice if you want interactive elements. Those might be links, buttons, or any other UI controls that users interact.
If you can, try to use only a single color for the purpose of primary interactions. That color will start to have one association for the user.
You can devise dark and light versions of the interactive color. Shades will help you convey different states for UI elements. A pressed or a hover state are examples.
Denotative Colors Defining
Denotative colors have meaning. You’ll need to come up with a color scheme for states on your app or site, such as ones for error, success, and warning. The ones more commonly used for these purposes are red, black, and green.
And Last! but not to miss the Accessibility
When choosing the right color for your UI toolkit, keep in mind the level of design accessibility of your color palettes and its contrast level. That helps people who are color blind to use your products easily.
To make sure your colors palette is accessible, you can use some of the contrast checkers and design elements accessibility checkers like WebAIM, noCoffee, Accessibility Scanner.
Concluding, It never hurts to workshop color choices so your potential customers can give you feedback before you take something like a website or new company logo live. If you follow the best practices on colors usage in UI design that we’ve mentioned, there is no reason you can’t reach a new level of success for your brand.
Sources: https://usabilitygeek.com/
~by Aishwarya Mohandas
