Color Them Wonderful…
Colors play an important role for all of us, both in our personal and business lives. Whether it’s in our interaction with friends and family, or with clients and potential customers, a deliberate use of colors we can make a statement, draw attention or set the overall tone towards achieving a certain goal.
The basic derivation of modern color theory comes from the color wheel. Catalog themes employed by many print catalog software companies are grounded in this theory. In summary, color theory holds that the primary colors in the spectrum are red, yellow and blue. We then create secondary colors, which are green, orange and purple, by blending two primary colors. Tertiary colors can then be produced as a combination of primary and secondary colors.
A Two Minute Color Theory Crash Course
Companies that produce catalogs and print catalog software have to also think of colors not only in terms of the social and cultural impact they are seeking to make on an audience, but also in terms of the perceptual, temporal and contextual differences. And that’s where additional aspects of color theory come into play.
Complementary colors are colors at opposite side of the color wheel that appear brighter when placed near each other. These colors have the most significant contrast and can be used sparingly to make some layout in your catalog stand out significantly.
What about colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel? If you use your catalog software to build catalogs using the colors yellow-orange, yellow and yellow-green you are following an “analogous” color theme. Since they match well and are easy on the eyes, these colors are used to produce tranquil designs – much like those found in nature.
You may also use your print catalog software to develop a theme with a “dichromatic” scheme, either complementary or analogous, that would be based on only two colors, for example beige-blue, white-blue, or black-red.
A “monochromatic” color scheme on the other hand uses a single basic color (such as blue) meshed with darker shades, paler tints and grayer tones of the basic color, throughout the catalog. Such schemes, too, are easy on the eyes and can be used to set the overall tone for your catalog, letting other objects (such as color photos) to dominate.
Print catalog software users also employ “hot” colors, which are named this way because they are typically associated with fire or the sun. These colors include either red, yellow, orange, or some derivative of these. Conversely, they may choose “cool” colors, such as violet, blue, and green. These colors are linked to elements like the sky, forests and water. Hot colors make aspects of the catalog design stand out, while cool colors are used when the designer wishes certain design objects to recede or step out of the limelight a bit.
We Have the Technology…
With so many color theories and color combinations to bear in mind, how does one go about putting a catalog together? It’s not easy for sure, and even seasoned graphic artists must work hard to excel at it. But even the novice has tools at their disposal that will help them build fluid and professional color themes for their print catalog. For instance, try getting your feet wet with Adobe Color CC (https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/). The site has ready-made themes and helpful tools that you can use to begin your catalog project.
Get inspired by browsing through a multitude of color themes already developed by other users, or try out one of the simple-to-use tools. You can create a customized theme for your catalog using the color wheel, color sliders and intelligent color harmony rules at your disposal. Use the color extraction tools and generate professional-looking themes that enforce your Branding, like a print catalog software provider would, from images such as your corporate logo. These helpful resources can be used to generate components for your catalog that can then be integrated into publishing software like Adobe InDesign to produce high-quality print or online catalogs. Share your ideas with a vast community of Adobe Color CC users and get some creative feedback on your creations.
Of Rods and Cones
Print catalog software providers are very aware of the need for color-appropriateness with regards to their designs. Print catalog color schemes have to be versatile and adaptable to many different types of readers. Thought about embedding red text on a green background? Think again, unless you want to alienate a lot of people. (Evidence suggests up to 10% of the male population is colorblind.)
Another thing to consider is that people may want to print or copy your print catalog and can only do it in black and white. It is also essential that print catalog and web catalogs will appear legible in black and white as well as color. Good catalog software providers are conscious of these design fundamentals and make them a hallmark of their catalog designs.
Where Do We End Up?
So what should an ideal color-combined and harmonized catalog look like? Whether you’re thinking of pulling together a flier-insert for a newspaper, a retailers product catalog, or an online product website, your choices of color are crucial for branding your organization. Print catalog software developers and companies hosting your online catalog often have resources to help you develop your own catalog color scheme.
A great-looking catalog will revolve around your overall corporate brand and color scheme. A look at the BestBuy.com online catalog illustrates this. The corporate colors – blue and yellow – are part of the primary color scheme and have been judiciously used to make the corporate brand stand out. Note the use of yellow and white text against a background with hues of blue, which calls attention to significant parts of the message. Standardization of colors and consistency of themes are well applied, making navigating through the catalog feel seamless and coherent. Finally, if you discard all the colors and print in black and white, you can still read everything clearly. This has all the elements of a well produced color-combined catalog.
How Do We Get There?
There are several roads that can ultimately lead you to an impactful catalog design. Hiring a professional designer might be an effective way to create a highly customized design, but it would be the most costly approach by far. It will also require you to manage yet another team member on your staff as they patiently go about developing various design templates needed for the project.
An alternative route may be for you to build your own uniquely customized color scheme, while keeping all of the color rules discussed above in mind. Even using tools such as Adobe Color CC, you would still need to invest a significant amount of time building the design templates. However, for the price you pay in time, money, and effort, you get the most unique and customized design layouts to use with your print catalog software.
Hidden in Plain Sight…
The quickest and most productive route to a successful print catalog design would be to use pre-designed catalog templates. Built by experienced graphic artists with a firm knowledge of color theory, these templates are available to you for free. With minor adjustments, you can quickly create templates that are well-grounded in color theory and which flow harmoniously with your overall corporate color schemes and logos.
With pre-built design templates, not only will you save time creating a template from scratch, but you’ll have the peace of mind knowing the templates are field-tested and bug-free. This jump-start approach to the print catalog design process will leave you with more time on your hands to focus on developing quality content and deciding on appropriate distribution channels.
What’s Next?
Master artist, Pablo Picasso, famously said “Colors are only symbols. Reality is to be found in luminance alone”. Today, designing a truly effective print catalog for the modern consumer needs to consider colors, luminance and much more. To shelter you from the minutia of color theory and prevent you from spinning around an endless color wheel, you can rely on resources like those provided by Adobe Color CC. These tried and tested resources can help you to quickly and cost-effectively build professional catalog templates without having to hire expensive graphic designers. Once developed, these templates can then be seamlessly integrated with print catalog software and other Product Information Management (PIM) solutions for broader distribution.
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