Tag: design

Before you decide to create a website for your business, you first MUST consider marketing. IN other words, you have to seriously consider how you will get people to your website

I recently wrote an article that answers the question “What is SEO”. In the article, I made an analogy that compared the internet to a shopping center/mall of information. In other words, the internet today is a place where people go to look for information they want and need.

In this shopping center (like many other shopping centers), there are areas that see more foot traffic than others. These areas are often close to mall entrances, near parking lots. 

If you owned a store in one of these shopping centers, it would be in your best interest to try to have your store located in one of these high-traffic areas. Because this would give you access to more potential traffic every day than other stores in the shopping center.

Now say you happen to decide to open a store in that shopping center. But you don’t do anything to try to get your store in a high foot traffic area, you might struggle to get new customers.

Let’s also say that you spent hundreds of thousands of dollars just to build the store, without having a strategy for getting new customers, all the money you invested in building your store might be money wasted.

Unfortunately, this is a story I have seen far too often in my digital marketing career. Many small business owners spend lots of money on building websites without any strategy on how to get new customers to their websites.

This often ends up becoming a waste of time & money for these small business owners. They build this great digital marketing asset (their website), but the website is useless because there’s little to no traffic going to the website.

I decided to write this section in this article about how to create a website for your small business because I want you to avoid making the mistake that I have seen so many business owners as you make.

So, before you go on google and search for “how to create a website for my small business”, start searching instead for ways to get more traffic to your website. Because if you build a website before thinking about how to get new customers to it, you might end up with a marketing asset that is bringing little to no value to your business.

How to get traffic to your website

In today’s digital marketing world, there are two main ways you’re going to be able to get traffic to your website. I’m going to mention them here to give you a place to start in your search for how to get traffic to your website.

I’ll also mention it because your strategy for getting new customers to your website will dictate what kind of website you decide to create.

  1. Paid advertising
    1. On of the tools you can use in digital marketing to get new customers to your website is paid digital ads. 

Paid digital ads are what they sound like. You pay social media platforms or search engines so they can display your ads on search engine results pages (SERP), websites, social media, and or social media networks.

Advantages of paid advertising

There are a few advantages of paid advertising.

  1. Paid advertising is fast.

Paid advertising is faster than organic advertising. With paid advertising, you can start getting customers to your website on day one.

  1. When done right, and for the right reason(s), paid advertising can be an effective digital marketing tool. 

Disadvantages of paid advertising

Though paid digital ads can be a great tool in certain situations, it has major drawbacks.

  1. Digital ads convert less than organic marketing.
    1. For example on a SERP like this, customers are much more likey to click on organic search results than they do on paid search. (numbers)
    2. Customers are much more like to buy from brands they know (social media)

The benefits of Organic marketing

By the end of this section, it will become clear to you which marketing strategy is my favorite (this one). This is because I believe organic digital marketing is a much better strategy for the long-term viability of any good company.

  1. Organic marketing is more authentic. Paid ads can be impersonal. More over, 
  2. Organic marketing is more effective.
  3. Organic marketing is more sustainable.

In the article I wrote about SEO, I noted that SEO was everything you do to put your store in a high traffic area of a shopping mall. The work you do at the beginning to get your store in those high-traffic areas might be a lot more than creating paid ads.

But it is not only more efficient, but it is also a more sustainable way to grow your business. Think about it, if you don’t do this work to get your store in a high foot traffic area of the shopping mall, you’ll have to consistently think about how to get your customers to walk back to where your store is.

However, if you do the work at the start to put your store in a high foot traffic area, you’ll have to do less work in the long term to get your customers to your store. The high visibility of your store will mean that you’ll have an endless source of potential customers to your store.

Type of websites?

As I mentioned above, the strategy you decide to implement to get customers to your website will determine what kind of website you decide to build.

If you opt for paid advertising, you’ll need one or multiple landing pages. 

Landing pages are web pages that are meant to advertise a specific product or service. With a landing page, you won’t need to have a website with many pages (About, Contact, Services etc). All you’ll need is one webpage with a clear description of what your product or service is, and how they can purchase or subscribe to it.

You’ll also need to know how to run ads or hire someone that can help you do it.

If you go instead with an organic strategy, you’ll have to develop a comprehensive strategy to get customers to your website.

In this case, you’ll have to dedicate some time for content creation, or you’ll have to pay someone to do it for you. When it comes to SEO, content is king. You cannot rank without sufficient content.

How to create a website for your business

Now that you know what to do before you decide to create your website, let’s talk about how to create a website for your small business.

There are a few things you’ll need in order to create a website for your small business. I’ll go step by step and explain each of the steps and why each of them matters.

Get A Domain Name

Whether you choose to drive people to your website using ads or organic marketing, you’ll need a domain name.

A domain name is simply the address of your website. In other words, what server in the world is your website located on? A domain name typically looks something like this: domainname.com.

Why a Domain name matters?

Your domain name matters because it plays an important role in SEO.

Consider the following scenario.

You’re a restaurant owner, and you’re getting ready to open a new vegan restaurant in your city of Los Angeles.

Your grandfather’s name is John Smith, and in his honor, you’re planning on naming the restaurant after him: “Smith’s Place”.

After you take care of all the legal paperwork it’s time to choose a domain name for the new website you will be creating for your restaurant. You’re torn between smithsplace.com, smithsveganrestaurant.com & smithsveganplace.com.

Which one of these domain names would be the most beneficial from a digital marketing perspective?

If you chose smithsveganrestaurant.com, you’ve chosen correctly.

As a vegan restaurant owner, your target audience will be users/customers searching for “vegan restaurants”.

Nothing will inform search engines like Google, that your website has to do with vegan restaurants, more than have the words “vegan” & “restaurant” in your domain name.

If you go with a domain name like smithsplace.com, you’re going to increase your chances of ranking high for the search term: “Smith’s Place”. But what is smith place? Google doesn’t know. Neither do your users. They are unlikely to search for your restaurant using those terms.

So, you might be missing out on many customers searching for “vegan restaurants”.

It’s tempting to want to come up with unique names to try and differentiate yourself from the competition. However, unless you have a huge budget and can afford to do some market and competitive research to determine what kind of a name you might use to differentiate yourself from your competition, it’s better to make it clear online what your business is about. 

Choose your hosting provider

Simply put, website hosting is a rental service similar to renting apartments. In the case of website hosting, however, the hosting providers rent space/storage on specialized computers called servers to businesses who need the storage space.

While choosing your website hosting platform, you probably will have to choose your website building platform as well. This is because many of the website builder platforms out there (like Wix, and Squarespace) come with website hosting built-in. So, if you choose a website-building platform like Wix or Squarespace, you won’t have to give website hosting another thought.

I recently wrote an article about why I believe WordPress is the best website platform for small business owners.

If you go with WordPress you will have to be selective when choosing your website hosting provider.

As with many things in life, with website hosting, you get what you pay for. Companies like Bluehost, or GoDaddy provide hosting services along with domain registration services.

However, their web hosting services are not built for WordPress. They are generic web hosting services.

Companies like WPEngine or Kinsta are specifically built to handle WordPress websites. Full disclaimer: I personally use WPEngine for all the websites I manage.

Do it yourself or Hire a professional

Once you have your domain and website hosting service it’s time to create a website for your small business.

For this step, you’ll have two options:

  • Do it yourself or
  • Hire a professional

Do it yourself

At the dawn of the internet, creating a website by yourself might have been impossible for the average person. You had to know how to code.

Today, with the advent of website building companies like Wix, and Squarespace, creating a website alone is as easy as dragging and dropping elements onto a screen.

No matter what website platform you choose, if you decide to create the website yourself, the process will be relatively the same:

  1. Choose a theme/template
  2. Customize the theme/template
  3. Create the pages for your website

Platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly are much easier to use than WordPress. However, that ease of use comes at a price: They are harder to scale.

That’s why I recommend business owners with plans to grow and scale their business to choose WordPress. Furthermore, plugins like Divi and Elementor can give WordPress features comparable to easier platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly.

Pros of doing it yourself

One of the main benefits of doing a website yourself is that you’ll save money from not having to hire a web designer/developer.

Cons of doing it yourself

There are a few disadvantages of creating a website yourself

  1. Time consuming. 
    1. One of the biggest disadvantages of creating a website yourself is the time it takes to create it. You’ll have to spend time not only creating the website, but also learning the platform.
  2. Bad/inconsistent design
    1. If you’re not an expert designer, or don’t have a good feel for design, the design you create for your website might not be adequate. User interface is an important part of creating a website. Bad user interface can have many bad effects including: 
      1. High bounce rate
      2. Lower rankings on search engines
      3. Low conversion rate

Because of the two disadvantages listed above, my recommendation is if you can afford to hire a professional, do it. It’ll be worth your while if you find the right designer/developer for the job.

Hire a professional

If you choose to hire a professional, there are few things you will need to know.

First, it’s important that you understand the difference between a web designer and a web developer. Knowing the difference between those two will help you save time and money. For your convenience, I have written an article on the subject that you can read here.

Second, it’s important that you understand web design pricing. Here is the most comprehensive article I have ever read about web design pricing.

This article will give you a great starting point when you think about a budget for your website.

Finally, you’ll need some resources on where you can find good developers/designers.

Personally, I have successfully used UpWork on many occasions to hire designers. Though I like UpWork, a company that is built specifically for customers who use WordPress is Codeable, which I have also used successfully.

Other companies where you can find freelancers of all types are Thumbtack, and Fiverr.

Final Words

So, there you have it: How to create a website for your business, including the most important thing to consider before you start creating your website: marketing.

I hope you enjoyed the article. If you did, have any questions or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Tag: design

As an artist, I pride myself on being able to see and create beautiful arrangements and designs, using various elements.

Whether it’s painting, drawing, or sculpting, the tools you use to create beautiful designs matter as much as the way you put elements together to create works of art.

When it comes to font pairing, the tools are the fonts, and how you put them together is the pairing.

Even the most creative minds can experience creative blocks. So, we put together this list of 9 font pairing examples, in case you are searching for fonts for a design, and you need a little inspiration boost.

Font Pairing Explained

Before you jump into font pairing, you can check out this article I wrote recently about how the look of a website can positively or negatively impact SEO.

This will give you a small background as to why typography matters.

Think of font pairing like painting a masterpiece. It’s not enough to paint the most beautiful tree in the world, and then the most beautiful car right next to it.

Good designers always have to answer the question: how/how well are two elements going to fit together in my design.

Font pairing is the same. Two fonts can be the most beautiful fonts separately, but when put together, they can look off-putting, feel off-brand, or just plain look awful together.

How to come up with a successful font pairing

A successful font pairing is one that visually represents the brand and communicates it’s values, personality, and style. 

But how do you begin to come up with one?

Coming up with a successful font pairing is an intuitive and personal process.

It starts with thinking about what fonts communicate what the brand is all about. Now, imagine a Law Firm website with a grungy, hand-written script font. Would that evoke security and trustworthiness? Probably not.

There’s also the technical side, which I won’t dive into today, but having a deeper understanding of typography, and how typography can evoke certain emotions in people, can help a designer make better font pairing choices.

But if you would like to learn more about how to pair fonts, and the inner workings of font pairings, below is the best article I have ever read on the subject.

The article is written by the team at Canva. It discusses 10 golden rules to live by when combining fonts.

9 Font Pairing Examples for your inspiration

Now, that we have the basics out of the way, let’s jump right into the 9 font pairing examples you can use to get inspired.

9. Poppins Bold + Lora

Screenshot for the website "Finregpartner.com", to showcase the beautiful font-pairing between Poppins and Lora

About Finreg Partners

Finreg Partners is a law firm that specializes in financial regulations in the fintech industry.

For this project, we needed fonts that were modern yet classical. So, we went with Poppins and Lora.

Poppins is a sans-serif font that falls into the new “Geometric” type. Fonts in this category tend to look and feel more modern than most of their sans-serif counterparts.

Lora is a serif font that falls into the “contemporary” category.

The combination of the modern (geometric) sans-serif font and the contemporary serif gave us the perfect balance of modern and classic we were looking for in a pairing.

8. Gilroy Bold + Noto Serif TC

Screenshot of the website "BuildersSiding.com", to show the beautiful font pairing between Gilroy Bold and Noto Serif TC

About Builders Siding

Builders Siding Co is a roofing and siding company located in Chantilly, VA. The company specializes in the installation and replacement of siding, windows, roofs, and other home improvement items.

For this project, we needed fonts that were both bold and inspire trustworthiness. We wanted to tell Builders Siding’s customers, that they can trust this family-owned business with their home improvement projects.

Gilroy Bold is another geometric sans-serif font. Gilroy Bold is bold as the name suggests.

Noto Serif TC is a traditional serif font. These kinds of fonts are often associated with established, trustworthy companies.

The combination of those two fonts gave us the boldness and trustworthiness we were looking for in a pairing.

7. Gilroy Bold + Overpass

Screenshot of the website "Rnicolecollection.com", to show the beautiful font pairing between Gilroy Bold and Overpass

About R Nicole Collection

R Nicole Collections is a fashion eCommerce shop for handmade and custom made shoes and other accessories.

For this project, we were looking for modern, elegant and forward-looking.

Gilroy Bold was a perfect fit for the modern feel we were looking for.

We chose Gilroy Bold for it’s modern appeal but also to differentiate R Nicole Collections from other fashion eCommerce shops out there.

Overpass is also a modern sans-serif font developed by Delve Fonts. Thin, longer fonts tend to look and feel elegant. Overpass is a bit elongated, giving us the elegance we wanted.

That, along with the geometric Gilroy, gave us the exact pairing we wanted for this project.

6. Dm Serif Text + DM Sans

Screenshot of the website "expressbuildingbuyers.com", to showcase the beautiful font pairing between Dm Serif Text and DM Sans

About ExpressBuildingBuyers.com

Express building buyers is a company that allows customers to sell their buildings, apartment complexes or set of apartments quickly.

For this project, we needed fonts that had a look and feel that was traditional & trustworthy, yet modern.

So, we went with Dm Serif Text and DM Sans. Having both fonts belong to similar font families gave us the unity we needed in a design.

But, combining a sans-serif font with a serif one gave us the contrast we needed between traditional and modern.

5. Calistoga + Source Sans Pro

Screenshot of the website "Lucasso.me", to showcase the beautiful font pairing between Calistoga and Source Sans Pro

About lucasso.me

Lucasso is one of the websites I built for myself. This a website I used to showcase my paintings and try to inspire others to be creative.

For this project, I needed fonts that SCREAMED creativity.

Calistoga belongs to the “display” category of fonts. The beautiful curves that make up this typeface not only say “creative” but also give it a friendly look/feel.

This typeface says “I’m creative, I’m friendly, I’m down to earth”, which is exactly what I was going for.

I paired it with Source Sans Pro, which is another sans-serif font. I choose a sans-serif font here because sans-serif fonts are easier to read on screens.

I specifically chose Source Sans Pro because the strokes are a bit more free-flowing than most other sans-serif fonts, which adds to the creative/friendly look and feel I was going for.

4. Pacifico + Roboto Light

Screenshot for the website "andaleash.com" to showcase the beautiful font pairing between Pacifico and Roboto

About And A Leash LLC

And A Leash is a dog daycare company in Tampa, FL. I’ve done some research and they are the highest rated dog daycare in that part of Florida (*high five to And A Leash*).

For this project, knowing the company is a dog-friendly place, we wanted fonts that felt friendly and welcoming.

Pacifico belongs to the category of typefaces called “script”. This category of typeface is the one that always looks handwritten.

These handwritten-looking typeface often reminds us of handwritten letters from before technology, which often brings feelings of warmth & friendliness.

I paired this font with Roboto for two simple reasons:

  1. They look good together.
  2. Roboto is a sans-serif font, which makes it easier to read on screens.

3. Playfair Display + Quicksand Light

Screenshot of the website "RegConcile.com", to showcase the beautiful font pairing between Playfair Display and Quicksand

About RegConcile

RegConcile is another law firm specializing in financial regulation including general consulting, anti-money laundering (AML) ect.

For this project, we wanted to make the finished project put the words “trust”, “authority”, and “modern” in the minds of the customers.

So, we chose Playfair Display, a serif font that looks more modern than other serif fonts. We essentially killed three birds with one stone when we chose this font.

We paired it with Quicksand Light, a sans-serif font that helped us accentuate the modern feel of the design.

2. Playfair Display + Overpass

A screenshot of the website "Social Register Las Vegas", to show the successful font pairing between Playfair Display and

About Social Register Network

Social Register Network is the premier business networking organization exclusively for business owners, executives, young professionals, entrepreneurs & influencers.

Full disclosure, we are a corporate sponsor for Social Register Las Vegas. But, rest assured it’s not why they are included in this. We really are proud and happy about our font pairing for this design.

For this project, the owner wanted the finished website to look classic, elite, but modern.

So, we turned to our friend Playfair Display again. At the time, it was the font that was going to accurately capture all three adjectives the owner wanted.

This time, however, we paired the serif font with another font we’ve discussed in this article previously: Overpass.

We thought this lengthier sans-serif font would add a bit of elegance to the overall design, which would make it look and feel more elite.

1. BW Darius + Nexa Bold

Screenshot of the homepage of this website (brandwell.staging.wpengine.com), to showcase the beautiful font pairing between BW Darius and Nexa Bold

Call me biased, but this might be the best font-pairing we have ever come up with.

For this project, I wanted something bold and creative. While looking for fonts, I stumbled upon BW Darius. As soon as I saw this typeface, I knew it was the one.

This font says both bold and creative. Additionally, the fact that it’s a serif font adds the trustworthiness factor to the design.

I paired BW Darius with a sans-serif (Nexa Bold) font for readability reasons, but also because it looked great next to BW Darius.

Additional Resources

So, there you have it. It’s our list of 9 font pairing examples for your inspiration. But, wait. There’s more.

If you’ve stumbled upon this article, that means you want to learn more about design either for your business or just for self-improvement.

Here are additional resources to help you learn more about fonts and font pairing.

Where to find fonts

Below are a few links where you can find fonts, both for free or to purchase.

NOTE: Most of the fonts we used for our design are free. Depending on your project and/or budget, feel free to check out some paid options. They often are better quality, and you’d possibly be helping a starving artist. 🙂

Additional Font Pairing resources

In addition to the website above to help you find fonts, here are more websites to give you even more inspiration for font pairing.

That’s all folks. I truly hope you like the article and that it was somewhat helpful to you. If you have any feedback or any other suggestions for font pairings, leave a comment below.

Tag: design

So, you’d like to create your color palette for a new painting you have in mind, or a graphics design project you are working on.

To achieve your goal, you search the internet for the best resources about color theory and how to mix colors.

You even read a couple of books on color schemes, but most of what you find teaches you about the theories, and no one talks about the holy grail: How can you create your unique palette.

No worries. You’re in the right place. Today, I’ll show you a few tricks to help you create your own color palette.

Before I do, it’s important to go over the basics. If you believe you’ve had enough of all the basics, skip down to the main section section. Otherwise, let’s get started.

Color Basics

Color is one of the main elements of art. The others are line, shape, form, space and value.

Elements of art are the building blocks for any design project.

Though many designs don’t require colors, adding colors to one is an easy and fast way to add unity & harmony to it.

Below is “Color Basics Cheat Sheet” that I created to help my students learn the basics of color theory.

You can download the pdf version of this cheat sheet by clicking this link: color basics cheat sheet.


Color definitions

Let’s start with some common color definitions.

Hue

Hue refers to a specific wavelength of light. It is the portion of the spectrum that is reflected (not absorbed) when light hits an object we see.

Shade

Shades are created by mixing any hue with black.

Tint

Tints are created by mixing any hue with white.

Tone

Tones are created by mixing any hue with gray.

The image below illustrates the difference between a green hue, one of its shades, one of its tints, and one of its tones.

Value

Value refers to the amount of light reflected by a color, regardless of hue. Values are on a scale from lightest (white) to darkest (black).

Hues have intrinsic values. For example, the purple hue below is intrinsically darker than the yellow hue next to it.

I have included a value scale below the hues, to show you how dark and light each one of the hues are.

Saturation

Sometimes referred to as intensity, saturation is the amount of purity of a hue.

Colors can become desaturated (less intense) by adding black, white, or gray.

Temperature

In addition to values, hues can give us a sense of temperature.

Some hues feel warm(er) (reds, yellows, oranges), others feel cool(er) (blues, greens, purples).

Primary Colors

Primary colors (hues) are red, blue, and yellow. They are called so because when mixed together, they create other hues.

Secondary Colors

Secondary colors (hues) are created by combining two primary colors. They are orange, green, and purple.

Tertiary Colors

Tertiary colors (hues) are created by combining two primary and/or secondary colors.

Below is an image illustrating primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. The illustration also covers temperature, by showing you which hues are often known to feel cooler and those that feel warmer.

Picture illustrating primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, along with temperature.

Color scheme vs color palette

Color schemes are general guidelines for how to harmoniously combine two or more hues, tints, shades, or tones.

Your color palette is the resulting color combination you’ll create, using your knowledge of color schemes.

There are an infinite number of ways to harmoniously combine colors.

Below are 5 of the main ways that are known today.
Pictures of basic color schemes, based on color theory.

Analogous

An analogous color scheme combines three or more colors that are next to each other on the color wheel.

Complementary

A complementary color scheme combines two colors on opposite sides of the color wheel.

Split-Complementary

Split-complementary color scheme combines three colors. The first one on a side of the color wheel, the other two are opposite to the first color, but on each side of its complementary.

Triadic

A Triadic color scheme combines three colors that are the same distance apart from each other, on the color wheel.

Tetradic

A Tetradic color scheme combines four colors. When connected, the four colors create a rectangle.

How to create your own color palette

So now you’ve got the basics. You’re ready to create your own color palette. But the question remains: how to get started? Let’s jump right in.

Step 1: Choose your hue(s)

When creating your own color palette, it is good practice to start with emotions.

In case you did not know, colors have the ability to evoke certain emotions in our brains.

Neil Patel, a digital marketing expert, wrote an extensive article on color psychology.

The article discusses in detail how colors affect our emotions, and how to use that knowledge to create a color combination that accurately reflects the message we want to send with a design.

You can refer to the article for a more detailed explanation, but for the sake of this article, let’s choose the blue hue below as our main hue.

Picture showing the the main blue hue I chose to for this tutorial.

Step 2: Choose a color scheme

Digital colors vs paint colors

Mixing digital colors is easy. Often, it involves choosing colors from a digital color picker, like the one below.

Picture of digital color picker.

To create a complementary color scheme, simply choose two colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel. Creating a triadic color scheme means finding three hues that are evenly spaced on the color wheel, and so on.

Mixing paint colors is a completely different story.

I use acrylic for most of my painting projects. With acrylic alone, I know of 5 different hues of blue: Fluorescent Blue, Phthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Primary Blue, Cobalt Blue.

Each one of these different shades of blue has a different pigment than the other. Consequently, each one will have a slightly different complement on the color wheel.

With paint colors, creating a harmonious color scheme involves knowing each individual hue and being able to match them to the correct corresponding hues.

Choose a color scheme

Whether you are using digital or paint colors, one of the next steps will be to choose a color scheme.

If you need a color palette with a lot of contrast, you can go with a complementary or split-complementary color scheme.

On the other hand, if you wanted a color palette with similar values, you can go with an analogous color scheme.

For this example, I chose the blue hue from earlier, and I created an analogous color palette with that hue as a base.

Step 2: Consider tones and values

When I got back into painting about 5 years ago, I predominantly used pure hues in most of my artworks.

My color palette was often similar to the color palette above.

While I was able to create beautiful pieces at the time, the quality of my paintings significantly improved when I started using tones.

If you remember tones result from mixing a hue with gray. There are two main advantages to using tones instead of pure hues.

Get more unique colors

Mixing primary, secondary, and even tertiary hues are easy. You just get two, three or more hues together, combine them and you have something new.

Since those colors are easy to replicate, most people (typically beginner artists) tend to use them. The more you see them, the more you realize there isn’t anything too special about hues.

However, when you start adding grey to hues, it’ll take your palette to a whole new level.

Take a look at the color palette below and compare it to the previous one.

The colors for the one below are richer and I believe even more harmonious than the one above.

Make your design more realistic

One of the reasons we tend to like tones more is because most of the world we see is made up of tones, rather than pure hues.

Take a look at the landscape picture below. I used a tool in adobe illustrator to pick out a few of the colors present in the picture. Guess how many of them have a saturation of 100% (pure hue)? None of them.

picture of a landscape and the color palette that was used to create it

Indeed colors found in the natural world are often a variation of tones derived from various hues. That’s why when you only use pure hues, your paintings/digital project will tend to look more like fantasy worlds.

That is because pure hues are rarely found in the natural world.

Step 3: Experiment, experiment, experiment

This is the part that most artists/creatives often struggle with. It is also the part that most articles and tutorials won’t cover.

Experimenting will take your color palette to the next level, and will make you a better artist/creative in the process.

What distinguishes great artists from average ones tend to be how unique the latter are.

There are many ways for artists to distinguish themselves. Using a unique, harmonious color palette is one way to achieve this goal.

I created the color palette below based on the hue we started with earlier.

After choosing a color scheme and adding different tones to the palette, I expanded the palette by adding a couple of tones of green.

For this palette, I was inspired by the picture of the landscape above.


Picture of a unique color palette created using a analogous color scheme.

Not all tones of green would have beautifully complemented the colors that I already had.

Check out the modified palette below. The palette below might look as harmonious to you as the previous one. To me, it does not. There is something off about this palette. It could be the jarring transition between the last purple and the first green.

Picture of a unique color palette created using a analogous color scheme. This palette unlike the previous one in this article, is not harmonious.

The first palette has a much smoother transition between all colors, which makes it more harmonious.

This leads us to the final and maybe most important tip when it comes to creating your own color palette.

Trust your instincts

If you find the last color palette harmonious. Don’t feel bad. You are not wrong.

In fact, after taking a second look at it, I thought to myself that I could use that palette in a project, and make it look good.

Creating a color palette is a subjective endeavor. While doing so, you have to follow your instincts.

Color combinations that look good to you, may not look good to others. Furthermore, if your goal was to create a design that looks good to everyone, you’ll just end up creating something boring and uninteresting.

As I said earlier, what separates great artists from average ones is how unique the latter are.

Having one or more unique, harmonious color palettes you can use as an artist, is one way to distinguish yourself from others.

One of the best ways to create a unique and harmonious color palettes is to experiment over and over and over again and find a palette that speaks to you.

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below or contact me.

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