Guides
Working with colour you found.
- How to pull a colour palette from an image
The whole process, start to finish: choosing the image, picking a palette size, fixing a result that came back muddy, and getting the colours into your design file.
6 min read
- How designers choose colours from photography
Why photographs make good palettes and bad ones, what to do about light and white balance, and how to turn an image's colours into a working hierarchy.
6 min read
- HEX vs RGB vs HSL
Three ways of writing the same colour, what each is good for, and why HSL is the one to reach for when you are adjusting a colour rather than recording it.
5 min read
- How to create an accessible colour palette
Building a palette that meets WCAG without making everything grey: what the thresholds are, how to find the pairs that work, and the failure the ratio doesn't catch.
6 min read
- How many colours should a brand palette have?
Why the honest answer is more than you think and fewer than you want, and how to structure a palette so it survives contact with a real product.
5 min read
- How to extract colours from a logo
Logos are the easiest case and the one with the most traps: transparency, anti-aliasing, compression and the difference between a colour that looks right and the one the brand actually specifies.
5 min read
- How to find a colour from a screenshot
Screenshots are the most accurate source of colour you can get, if you take them properly. How to capture, what breaks the accuracy, and when to use dev tools instead.
4 min read
- How to use a moodboard to build a palette
Turning a wall of references into a palette you can build with: finding what the images agree on, spotting the accidental colour, and knowing when to stop collecting.
5 min read