[download] Colour swatches

Sometimes when designing something, weather it be a simple sign, poster or website, you must address what colours are to be used. What i do is look to my colour wheel pinned up on my wall and attempt to pick out some warm and cold colours, put them together and see how they complement each other. sometimes it doesn’t work out and you end up either spending too long choosing a combination of colours or you settle with a pallet that is aesthetically applying to look at.

There is another way of choosing a set of colours and that is using Adobe Kuler.

http://kuler.adobe.com

There are user generated colour pallets available to choose from.  Simply chose to navigate most recent, most viewed or random to browse and view what is available.

or you can create your own, now creating your own using the onscreen colour wheel is in a way pointless since you can simply go to Photoshop or whatever program you are using to do so, but what its creative page is useful for is creating a pallet from an image. For example if you have an image and you want the page, text and other elements to complement it, this would be an exciting tool to use.  To do this, simply go to create > create from image. It allows you to upload your own image or find some on flickr.

The fun doesn’t sop there though; you can now enjoy this tool on your desktop without a browser using adobe AIR.

First get Adobe air: Download

then get Adobe Kuler: Download

update: kuler is also part of adobe Photoshop CS4 to show it click on the window menu > extensions > kuler

Filed under: downloads, useful websites

UAL creates online sketchbook site

Earlier this week Darren Raven aka DRN posted up a link on blackboard to a university of arts website called sketchbook:

Check this site out – looks pretty interesting and possibly useful!

http://www.arts.ac.uk/sketchbook/home

To those of you that didn’t click on the link and explore this interesting site, here’s another attempt at encouraging you to look at the site (only clicked on it today myself).

so what is sketchbook?

Sketchbook is a new online tool for the creatively minded. Constantly evolving, its remit is to provide a conduit for creativity by encouraging experimentation with line. An image-hosting site with a difference, Sketchbook allows you to not only upload work, but to annotate, comment, sketch and scribble on images – yours and other artists’.

the site also lets you once you’ve registered, not only have your own section for yourself, but also to set up groups that enable students to collaborate with each other.

so i will leave you with the link and the website tag line:

“share your work, ideas and passions through image“

http://www.arts.ac.uk/sketchbook/home

When Darren recommends something it is always worth taking a look so please stop by blackboard as often as you can and check out that announcements page. Tell us what you think of it in the comments!

Filed under: useful websites, blackboard, collaborate, darren, portfolio, showcase, sketchbook, website