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Why so blue?

05 Jun 2015 18:21 #42628 by fats
Why so blue? was created by fats
hi all,

A member emailed me and asked me why is the site so blue, I replied that the site's colour is based on the masthead that we have and it's a blend of blue from there, but it got me thinking.

Should the main colour of the site be blue or should it be something else?

I'm working on the dark version of the site witch has the blue from the light site as the accent colour, so i was thinking that it would not be a major problem to look at a different colour for the site.

So what do you think? should we change or keep the blue?

Let me know below.

Fats

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05 Jun 2015 18:29 #42629 by Woodclaw
Replied by Woodclaw on topic Why so blue?
I'm happy with the current look.
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05 Jun 2015 19:22 #42631 by CDR
Replied by CDR on topic Why so blue?
I think blue, red and white are clearly SuperGirl's colors and they go perfectly with our vibe here BUT...
The black over white is really keeping me from reading more on the site. Remember that PC monitors are additive color devices unlike books that are substractive color devices. Allow me to explain this better... In substractive color devices you use the ambient light as a source and filter out the colors you dont want the viewer to get using Cyan, Magenta and Yellow ink filters. So, if you want red you add ink to the reflective white page to filter out everything BUT the red color (Magenta and Yellow in this case). This means that all colors begin with the viewer adjusting the ambient light to a comfort level with white and everything else is below that bright level. This adjust is what most users do without even noticing it and it protects your eyesight.
On the other hand we have PC monitors or TV's that are additive color devices. This ones begin with a black and add Red, Green or Blue light sources to create the colors. In this case the user needs to adjust the white level together with the ambient light to reach an acceptable level of comfort. The problem is that most home users never do a white adjust because most of the time the content displayed is in a varying range below white and users tend to adjust their sets to fit a particular favorite content. The problem is that when we display white as a background in our webpages we're basically surpassing the comfort brightness level and this do NOT protect our eyesight. Even more so when we're asking the users to read on the screen.
So... what to do then?
There are 2 main strategies for this end:
1) Change the color scheme to white or blue (ish) letters over black(ish) background. (My personal favorite)
2) Use the self-white-balance feature of the human vision system and use a slight tone of grey as white instead of the (255, 255, 255) value. Let's say (230, 230, 230). The thing is that the human vision places the "whitest" thing on your field vision as your white reference and places all the other colors below that.
Naturally this are just the main strategy ideas and finding a suitable color palette for a particular content requires experimentation and some level of viewer consulting.
Perhaps we could build a few template pages and have people vote over them?
Just an idea. I hope I have helped a bit.

CDR
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05 Jun 2015 19:33 #42632 by fats
Replied by fats on topic Why so blue?
CDR, you have taken me back to my web design classes with that post, it's all coming back to me, the sweaty palms, the reading of colour theory books, remembering to remove naspster of the machines before I got caught.

Those where the days, the new theme will allow me to use multiple colours in different parts of the page, so we could have a green menu, with a salmon pink header and a aqua background for example. I'm not a big fan of black on white text, being dyslexic it's not the easiest thing to read text, that’s why the text is a shade off grey rather than pure black.

your post, CDR does help.

Fats

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05 Jun 2015 19:54 #42633 by ace191
Replied by ace191 on topic Why so blue?
I love the blue.
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05 Jun 2015 21:13 #42634 by Scwank
Replied by Scwank on topic Why so blue?
I like the current colors and setup. Very clean. I hate black backgrounds - hurts my head.
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05 Jun 2015 21:49 #42635 by fats
Replied by fats on topic Why so blue?
My plan is to have a light and a dark theme, with a front page module to select light or dark, I’m wanting users views on the colours, it is possible for a light theme with blue text and a light theme with red text for example as well as a dark theme with both colours as well.

I need people to tell me what they want.

Fats

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05 Jun 2015 23:21 #42637 by Agent00Soul
Replied by Agent00Soul on topic Why so blue?
I quite like the current look - very clean and modern.
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