Designing A Proboard Skin - Part I Choosing the right colors

This will be a continued article, meaning that I will be submitting another part every so often. The first topic I'll be covering is Colors.

Let me start of by saying there is no perfect color scheme. Everyone has there own preferences. You will never make everyone perfecctly happily.

A good color scheme is easy on the eyes, matches, has more then one color, and is well balenced. Also, never use pitch black or the lightest white anywhere
on your forum (except for borders, text, etc.). If you want to use black, then use a lighter black, ecspecially for the background. A pitch black background is one of the worst mistakes you can make designing a forum.

Now, about what I said about having more then one color. What that means is that you can have the nicest shades of red ever, but if all you use for your forum is just red (or any color) it usually comes out overwhelming. Sometimes just one shade will work, but very rarly. The best way to go is pick two main colors that compliment each other and base your whole forum on them.

A good color scheme also has contrtast (thats why its smart to have two different colors). This is usually accomplished by having a dark bacgkround and lighter colored boards. But sometimes you can get good contrast/balence by having a lighter baased background and darker boards.

Text. Text color is the most important color you will chose. This is the text that has to be read on every single post on your forum. Sometimes opposite colors will work (like a white background and black text) but usually if you take your window color and make it alot darker or lighter it will turn out nice.

Links are next. Links can be the hardest to chose sometimes. Links shouldn't stand out too much, but they shouldn't be the same as your text color. If you are reading a post you should easily be able to tell whats a link and what isn't. The link color you chose will be all over you forum and it needs to look good against every background color its on. The same goes with staff names, they shouldn't stand out way too much and they should also go nicely with your forum color.

Picking colors can be very time consuming. Sometimes you'll think you have an awesome color
scheme but no one will like it, and you'll have to start over. But remember, it doesn't all have to be done at once. Its okay to slowly modify and perfect your forum. Creating a skin takes time, and no one part should be done all at once.


Tips:

• While you are working on a color scheme
  constantly ask others what they think. It is
  vital to have others opinions.
  
  
• Try using this order when creating a color scheme
  • Background
    
  • Links
    
  • Window Colors
    
  • Text
    
  • Title and Category Bars
    
  • Category and Title Text
    
  • The rest of the colors
    
    
  
  
• Try something unique, too many forums all look
  the same.
  
  
• Its best to have a graphic program open when picking colors. So you can selecct a color, and it will tell you a hex code. You won't get far just using the proboards pop-up colors. There are lots of sites listing Hex colors which can also be of use.
  
  
• Take your time, relax, don't let yourself get frustrated.
  

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By 17Godzilla

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Thanks to 17Godzilla for submitting this article and another one. My apologies on how long it took to get them up.


Last Edit: Nov 2, 2005 13:04:43 GMT by Chris