Day 5 – Cinco de Color!

Big changes around here, folks, as you can see!  Yesterday was a little hectic for me, the digital equivalent of this:

"C'mon, capri pants, beat those grungy hipsters!"

Finally, after a desperate, 140-character plea for help, the three-way tie for design style was finally broken by the hilarious and virtually sexy Rachel Vidoni, who not only pushed Web 2.0 style into the lead, but explained that she didn’t want my blog to wind up tasting like boiled cauliflower prepared by Emeril Lagasse. Emeril, if you’re out there, you can boil cauliflower for me any time, but Rachel was right.  In fact, she was more right than she realized—because it would be really tough to create a minimalist design from the [intlink id="2363" type="post"]three-column layout chosen for me on Day 2[/intlink].

Today, it’s time to talk color, which in the world of web design can be like talking about religion and politics at the dinner.

Once I had a design client who loved the color periwinkle (fellow writers, you should check out her blog, it’s irrepressibly great stuff).  I designed her blog using periwinkle. Her initial responses: “Where’s the periwinkle I love so much?”  That’s a major problem with colors.  They’re extremely subjective and something strange happens in the process of converting reflected light into neuron transmissions—we all get different results. Making matters worse, designers like me can’t be satisfied with the Roy G. Biv set and insist upon labeling colors with silly names like cerulean and mango and buttercream and verdant hill.

It’s especially complicated for me, too, because my favorite color is orange.  No, not street cone or construction site fencing orange, but more like the color of rust.  Not like the color of cantaloupe or prison jumpsuits or even mangos, but more like the color of autumn leaves.  Worst of all, orange is at the bottom of the favorites list for most other folks.

At the top of the favorites list, in life and on the web?  By a distant margin, blue is the most popular color.  There are countless studies, legitimate and quackified, that profess the powers of blue to calm people, instill confidence, and project stability.  Of course, anyone that’s been to Las Vegas can confirm that blue has the ability to invoke the opposite:

"We're creepy... and expensive! And we have Intel inside!"

But enough of my yacking.  Please take the following poll, choosing up to four colors that you think should be incorporated into Blog Salad’s design. You can pick your favorites.  You can pick red, white and green to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.  You can pick a hideous combination and I’ll figure out a way to make it work.  Or, you can write in your own color combo in the Other box.

And please remember, you can change your vote for up to one week if you show up tomorrow and it looks like performance artists vomited a box of Crayolas all over my blog.  In any case, thanks for voting!

Do believe there’s an evil color conspiracy?  Are you color-blind?  If so, please leave a comment explaining why you chose the colors on your blog instead.