Leveraging the Hard Work of the Fashionistas
May 16th, 2006
Choosing color schemes for designs are hard.
Recently, while reading Jeremiah Owyang’s great post on color resources, I discovered Natalie Jost’s nifty idea of using fashion designs to choose color schemes:
The color scheme came pretty easily because in fashion colors are usually already thought through and arranged in good harmony already. I find fashion a good place to start looking at color schemes in general for that reason. Why go through all the strain to come up with colors when some fashion designer has already done that for you?
Now, everything I know about fashion I’ve learned from watching episodes of Project Runway, but I know that fashion photographers and designers spend a lot of time thinking about colors of everything: the outfit, the makeup, the set. I agree with Natalie: why not use what they’ve already done?
May 16th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Great idea. I am best at coding and architecture but rather terrible at color. I’ll try this.
Do we need to watch out for any copyright issues, etc., if borrowing color sets from a catalog scene (e.g.)?
May 16th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Thanks Jared, glad it was helpful, aside from the ‘artisiticly’ arranged versions you show above, I found it interesting that some web designers will take pictures of either nature photos (natural) or famous art pieces for color inspiration.
Reusing something succesful makes sense.
May 16th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Justin, it’s my understanding that you can’t copyright colors. You can trademark them, in very rare cases (such as the color pink for Reynolds insulation), but trademark wouldn’t apply here since there’s no likelyhood of confusion between a site design and a dress. So, I believe the answer is no, as I understand the current state of US IP laws.
May 16th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Jeremiah, I agree we need to seek our inspiration from nature or other sources. In fact, what I learned from Project Runway is the fashion designers do just that.
May 17th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
I have been using a similar technique for a few years now. Very handy.