Colors are non-verbal communications to who is viewing your work of art. Work of art is what you create for others to view. Painters, writers, and even programmers have a work of art and develop a style of work that can follow them.
My style of programming says that my product has to be pleasing to the person using it. I don’t like clutter and when you use my product, it has to be pleasing to look at and be able to be relaxed while using it.
When you pick up a brochure or article, notice the color arrangement. How do you perceive your mood when looking at it. Color has meaning. Without knowing it, we base our moods with color.
Calming or cool colors are your blue, green, turquoise, or silver. Warm or exciting colors are your red, pink, yellow gold or orange. Neutral or unifying colors include brown, beige, ivory, gray, black, white.
Take looking at cars. While walking down the street you notice a white, black, or blue colored car. What’s your reaction to the car? I bet most of the time you just glance at it as it goes by. Now take those same cars and make their color red, orange, or yellow. That glance now turns into a stare because those colors are more exciting to look at.
Red colors are associated with energy, passion, desire, and love. This is an intense color. This color has high visibility, thus the reason for why you have red fire trucks, red stop signs, or signs that indicate danger.
Have you noticed how programs are designed? They have mostly a white background because white denotes the color of perfection and suggests simplicity. White is also a neutral color and can be used to soften the mood of your exciting colors. White can also cause headaches and be blinding if it’s too bright.
For some reason, my database programming trademark is the color green. Whenever I write a database program, my background is green. Why? Because green is a restful color, it has balance, harmony, and symbolizes freshness. I try to make my backgrounds a light flat green so that the screen isn’t glaring back at you.
I will also try to color the fields with yellow because that has a warming effect and generates mental activity. Yellow also gives a cheerful feeling. So, when you see my work of art, you will be looking at becoming restful, calm, you won’t have tired eyes, you’ll keep that endurance in keeping up with your task, and you will have a good mental outlook on your work.
