Spoonflower’s 12 Days of Design: Day #3: Develop a Color Palette

There are a lot of ways to pick your color palette for a project. Pantone has some great books on the subject. There are also lots of things on the internet, palettes already put together. Or you could develop a palette yourself, from a favorite color or two. Or choose a photograph, and select colors from that. Or just play around with colors and see what goes well together that evokes what you want to evoke. The Spoonflower blog post for today’s task has plenty of other ideas as well, along with a pretty thorough lesson in color. (Plus, now I’m in love with the Colour Lovers website.)

But even the best design can go awry with colors that don’t fit it well. So make sure you are conveying what you want to convey with your combination. Consider your audience as well. Are you designing fabric for kids? Babies? Goth types? Pick your color scheme accordingly.

One color scheme I’m considering.

While picking my colors, I kept playing around with my design details. My sketchbook never saw so much action. Finding a match between what I am drawing and what colors I am choosing can be a delicate balance. So, I’m narrowing it down to a few color palettes, and we’ll see which one fits best once the design is complete. Kind of like a list of baby or pet names. You have to look at the final design before deciding for sure.