Nature provides everything we need, and color is something we cannot leave. We derive different colors from nature to make our world full of fun.
In web design community, color is one of the key factors that determine the success of website. A website of extraordinary color combination leaves people an unforgettable memory that makes them visit again and again; a website of worse color makes people don’t want to see it for the rest of life.
Today, I pick up 4 websites with excellent color inspiration from nature that successfully demonstrate their features.
Red:
Red is one of the three basic colors in the world. We are blessed by countless red scenery from Mother Nature, the flourishing flower, the maple leaves; they bring shocking visual experience to our life. So psychologically, red conveys rich meanings. It symbolizes enthusiasm, happy, flourish, boom and etc. In addition, red also has derivative meanings on the other side. Animals who want to express the meaning of warning or stop, they use bright colors, and red is the most common one. It contains the meaning of stop and warning. We can see the birds or snakes warn their enemies with red.
Women’s Refugee Commission is an excellent example of adopting red from nature and combine color with their own features. Since they provide care, love and protection to refugee women, red is the most suitable color for their action and goal. It suggest the information of refugee will disappear as long as all of us provide love and care to them, and future will be like flourishing tulips. On the other hand, red also bring people’s attention of stop ignoring their pain.
They choose bright red in the middle and dark one on the sides. It is a wise idea to express the both information, and meanwhile, avoid monotone which increases the sense of hierarchy. A nice practice of color balance.
Blue:
When we talk about blue, the instinct reflection is water. All earth lives were derived from the ocean; thanks to H2O that give birth to all lives in universe. I believe no one could say no to embrace the blue ocean. As a matter of fact, that is somewhere we belong to. We can live for 7 days without food, but only 3 days life without water. So blue conveys the meaning of life, hope, peace, safe and etc. on the other hand, blue also give the negative information of grief or lonely. Have you ever cried for that dark blue of North Atlantic in Titanic?
Knight Liquidity is a perfect example that combines their business with nature blue. The first massage of first sight on Knight is simple and clear – water. This company has something to do with water. Specifically, they provide water solution in the places like Ethiopia, Haiti and India. They are committed to bring clean, safe water to the people in the above places. So blue is a right color for their business, it indicates that they are going to bring life and healthy to those places. The whole webpage is dominated by blue, but with gradient effect; so it is comfortable in visual. As the dividing line, the water plays a delicate role in divide the logo and content, which brings vivid and dynamic to the whole page.
Green is another basic color in nature. We are surrounded by green every time we resting in the garden, lying on the grassland or exploring in the forest. It is the color we like most in a rapid developing world; we advocate green way of life, green environment, green resources and etc. So green means fresh, growth, clean and new.
Green Infrastructure Inc is a nice example of choosing green to their website. They naturally present their business in a right color. It is a newly formed non-profit organization established to research alternative renewable energy sources that are sustainable and environmentally friendly. What they are doing is environmentally protective, which is clean and fresh. Undoubtedly, green will be the No. 1 choice for their website color. The whole page is green, which leaves people a brief and fresh impression. The menu contains the information they want to provide, so the menu color is a little bit darker compare to the background, and each menu is going to change even darker when the mouse moves to there. Therefore, it is convenient for people to find the core information of this webpage. As people get to understand them, green is automatically connected to their business. At this time, color is playing the role of sending massage that they are clean, fresh and protective – the exact result they want to have.
Golden:
Golden is a beautiful color in nature. When you walk in the wheat field or sunflower garden, you are touched by that vast golden stretching to the horizon. So we consider golden as rich, harvest and mature.
Truskawka is an outstanding golden website. Since I don’t understand the language used by this website, I can’t tell you exactly what is it all about; but fortunately, it helps me to build direct connection to the website’s information without any interference. At the first sight of this webpage, it is like a kind of visual shock to me, the golden gives me the sense of warm and harvest. After seeing those fruit pictures, I guess it is a farm website that selling various kinds of fruits. But from my perspective, they must have lots of fruits and it must be a harvest year. I think this feeling is brought by golden. If we change the background to black or any other color, I may not have that feeling.
The whole webpage only adopt one color, but different in depth, so it doesn’t seem like mechanical. It proves that one color is also suitable for web design, but need to be treated with difference in depth and effect.
Conclusion:
Color is the gift of nature, and soul of website. Choosing color is a kind of art. Before adopting any color to website, you need to understand their meaning and find the best color that matches your purpose. It’s just like you give birth to your website.
