Using Colour For Professional Looking Graphic Design Work

If you were to ask someone who works in the graphic design industry what makes a project look coordinated, planned and, above all, professional, the answer that they would give you would be ‘colour’. Having a professional design does not mean that you need to use a bland colour palette that doesn’t appeal to anyone; it’s all about deciding which colours to use and then outlining the best way to use them. There are plenty of ways that you can make your work appear much more professional, simply through the use of colour.

Anyone who works in graphic design will be able to tell you that colour has three properties – hue, saturation and value (which is sometimes called lightness).

• Saturation is how rich a hue is; neon colours, for example, are very saturated, whilst pastel ones are less so.
• Value refers to how bright a colour is; really, it is looking at how close it is to white or black.
• Hue outlines what part of the rainbow the colour belongs to (such as red, yellow, pink, green, purple, orange or blue).

The property that many people tend to trip up on is the hue, as they tend to choose colours that clash together instead of flowing nicely.

The following graphic design tips could be highly useful in finding ways that you can use colour in your projects to make them seem that much more professional:

• When you think you have a colour scheme that you like, try it out for a week; you need time to build an opinion.
• Don’t let the colour palette go stale; after four months, review the hues used and ask yourself whether they are still appropriate.
• Use bright colours sparingly; whilst a little splash will draw the user’s high, too much of it will cause them to become distracted easily.
• Avoid using the primary colours (red, green, blue and yellow) and instead give them a tinge of some other hue.
• Use muted backgrounds to make sure that your content stands out; there is nothing worse than a colourful website that you cannot read.

In many respects, the first step to working with colour is actually to start with none – you need to go greyscale. By removing all of the colour from a particular graphic design project, you will be able to spot some flaws that need to be addressed before you can start adding in a splash of blue here and a hint of aqua there. If you aren’t happy with the graphic design in greyscale, then now is your chance to make changes, to everything from the layout to the content.