Don’t Go Color Crazy

Looks pretty here, but avoid making your designs look like child's pinwheel.

One of the best ways to spice up a design is by adding a splash of color. If a little color is good, a lot must be better right? Not necessarily! Too many people make the mistake of going overboard on the colors for their business card, online newsletter, or flyer. To you it may not look like too much color because you may have added them to your design one by one. A blue title here, a red square there, a purple photo up on top… But to anyone else it probably looks like a circus-y mess!

See how much more integrated and soothing these similar colors are?

Remember my post about color theory that featured a picture of the color wheel? The idea isn’t to use the whole wheel all at once. Keep it simple! Use only one to three colors and try to keep them in the same family or even the same color using different shades of that color. Keep cools such a blue and green together, and save the reds and oranges (hot colors) for your next design.