Friday Art – The Salt Flats and Website Design
Each friday I show off a piece of art, music or photography from an artist that I have found. If you have someone that you love, or a piece that makes you feel creative, let me know – I’m always looking for great new creative minds!
This time, the image was found in nature – completely untouched by human hands. I know, it is in direct contradiction of what friday art is supposed to be, but after seeing an image like this and the creative ideas it created for me, I couldn’t help it!
According to the ColourLovers Blog, where I found the image, “Salt evaporation ponds are shallow man-made ponds designed to produce salt from sea water. The seawater is fed into large ponds and water is drawn out through natural evaporation which allows the salt to be subsequently harvested. The ponds also provide a productive resting and feeding ground for more than 70 species of waterbirds, including several endangered species. The ponds are commonly separated by levees. Due to variable algal concentrations, vivid colors, from pale green to bright red, are created in the evaporation ponds. The color indicates the salinity of the ponds. Micro-organisms change their hues as the salinity of the pond increases. In low to mid-salinity ponds, green algae are predominant.”
Basically, this is a picture, taken by Google Earth, of the salt flats and the colors created by the evaporation of the water and creation of algae.
Besides the image being beautiful and unique, what I found so interesting is that this would be a beautiful color scheme for a website or a brochure design. One of the questions I get asked most often is ‘where do you come up with your color themes’. I think that this is such a prevalent question because of the amount of time we spend indoors. Many of us spend our entire day behind a desk, in an office that, if we are lucky, has a view of other office buildings around the area. We spend a large amount of time trying to be creative without any idea that nature is creating great color palates all its own. I find that if I am having trouble picking a color scheme (does that blue really match that green?) and i just look at some nature images, I get my answer. Nature has an uncanny way of always being in color balance – have you ever really looked close at a sea of wildflowers (ones that truly are wild, and humans had no part in planting?) The colors are often off the wall, and wouldn’t seem to work together, but do. It is the same way in design, sometimes the color schemes that you wouldn’t expect to work can turn an average design to a stellar designs.
Colors for a website scheme
With that said, I have pulled the 5 hex colors out of the image that I would choose to use for a website. Feel free to steal the scheme and if you try it, let me know – I would love to see how well it really worked!
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