Colour coding
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- NickInfozure
I'm creating a large website. A portal with many many sections. I'm considering colour coding each overall section to make things more easy to find and to generally brighten up an information heavy site.
Very early stages at the moment so no designs yet sadly etc. But does anyone have opinions on using lots of colours in one site or does anyone have any examples of this that they like?
Thanks.
- WeLoveNoise0
- It only allows me to do 5 colours. Ive got at leats 8 sections distressingly.NickInfozure
- Dancer0
Not essentially but it all depends on how many colours you use.
If you have too many coloured sections it could get confusing, I was looking through a magazine the other day that had colour coded section, because they had so many sections the colours looked too similar. I would say Maximum of 7.Also I would only use the colour as a accent, not to colour the whole page up.. that would be too much
- NickInfozure0
Thanks for that. Yeh. The colours are as an accent. However, ive ended up with about 13 sections. Ive managed to get it down to about 8 main colours i think. And some have relation to other sections so the colours also have some relation. Get it mapped out and see what it looks like.
- WeLoveNoise0
just a thought
why not use tones/gradients to represent other sections ?- I have different tones for sections that have some relation. It seems to be working well.NickInfozure
- kelpie0
be aware that though colour coding sounds great when you start designing a portal, by the time you have to colour your 16th distinctive content section you start running out of distinctive colours.
Then everything turns black.
- this is truepoolio
- Im foreseeing this happening. Lots of brain work to be done i think. Currently it would work but may pose difficulties in the future.NickInfozure
- erkat0
Personally I've never been a huge fan of colour coding for the following reasons:
- Colour meanings are subjective and cultural.
- Very difficult to define a hierarchy in colour.
- Can lead to an incohesive visual language.Sometimes colour coding for different content sections can work better when combined with a descriptive icon for each section as well. Then there becomes a second level of association of the symbol and colour. Otherwise we're asking the audience to build a new association between a content type and colour which can mean asking them to override existing colour associations that they may have.
Another approach that could work could be to use a different pallette for each section rather than a single dominant colour. Then the interactions between those colours become the identity of the section and alos this can blur the preconceptions of subjective and cultural colour meanings for the audience because your giving them a combination of coulours as an identifier symbol.
- max_prophet0
Cloour coding only works if it's a) simple and b) something someone will use over and over and over again.
What colour coding really works? Traffic lights. Thats about it.
- fair point thatkelpie
- The plan is for it to be simple and to be used over and over again.NickInfozure