Pale Pastels + Cool Hues for Spring 2015 = En Plein Air (In the Open Air)
Top (10) Women’s and Men’s Colors
Colorful pastel is in for women this Spring/Summer 2015. The bolder colors in the palette become accents to their understated neutral counterparts. The men’s colors deviate from the women’s, mixing natural hues with deep, cool and strong colors.
黃道十二宮 huang2dao4 shi2’er4 gong1
: 12 Western zodiacs
Kun Reading
黄道十二宮 | こうどうじゅうにきゅう koudou juuni kyuu
: 12 Western zodiacs
十二星座 shi2 er4 xing1 zuo4
: the twelve constellations on the ecliptic plane
: the signs of the zodiac
Timeless Colors that span a 100 years
Top (10) Women’s and Men’s Colors
At New York’s Fashion Week earlier this year (for Fall 2014), designers blend spring’s brighter colors with the traditional darker hues of fall/winter. Their diverse color palette takes us on an adventure spanning 100 years—a season roused by various vantage points from past and present.
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The new 2014 Pantone Color of the Year: Radiant Orchid 18-3224 is sure to intrigue the eye and spark the imagination.
Radiant Orchid is a captivating, magical, enigmatic purple that has a harmony of fuchsia, purple and pink undertones. It is an expressive, creative and embracing purple—one that draws you in with its beguiling charm.
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As designers, we can never have “too much” of a color inspiration. Here are a few tools/sites that can aid in the pursuit of the perfect color combination! As you will come to see, each of these sites has a particularly strong point; a powerful tool that works exceptionally well for a specific need. And using a combination of them should give you the right resource for any situation when you find yourself lacking in color inspiration.
Adobe Kuler
This is one of the leading free web-based apps for color palette creation. With this tool, you can browse color themes that have already been created, view and store your own creations and upload images to extract color schemes from. It has several interactive and intuitive tools to build color themes, as well as modify existing ones and search, share and rate other designers’ themes within the Kuler community. One of the most convenient features of this app is that it integrates with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (CS6 and CC).
New & Best Feature: You can now grab color on the go through Kuler’s free app for the iPhone. It pulls colors from your surroundings and extracts a series of colors, which enables you to use it on your design program like Photoshop CS6 & CC as an extension!
Our naming convention of colors cannot be duller than the primary red, blue and yellow and secondary colors of purple, green and orange. Thanks to the advent of the web and its coloring system (RGB and Hex codes) and Crayola, here are a few more names that can add pizzaz and flash to your color vocabulary.
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I once had an almost 9 to 5 job, but I yearned for the life of being a freelancer. More than that, I wanted to roll out of bed and right to my computer without caring what I looked like. Well, they do say be careful what you wish for. Two years ago, the agency I have been working for, for more than 10 years, suddenly went belly-up. My 9 to 5 became 7 to 7 or more, …or less, depending.
2011 was a tough economic year. Luckily work came looking for me by word-of-mouth (you can never be too nice). And then, it slowed down. Then it picked up. That’s when I learned, I can NEVER turn away work, even at my busiest. Because I never know when the next project would show up.
When work started leveling out, I realized that the only way I can branch out is to expand my network. I was a little embarrassed about my old site: it wasn’t that the work wasn’t good, but the site was so 2009. Yes, it took me two years to finally redesign my site, and I did it with the help of WordPress – no shame in that. (Even with the help, it still took me more than a month to get the content and site to where it is. One can only imagine the feat if I had to do the coding myself!)
So when I happened upon this article, “Why an Online Portfolio Is Insanely Essential For Your Freelance Business Growth,” by Bryce Haga, I thought I’d use this opportune time to share (just as my site is almost whole), and add / “improve” upon it through experience and my time spent taking notes from Creative Live (a designer’s best friend! Thank you Creative professionals: Janine Warner, Melanie & Devin Duncan, who give your time so selflessly! I learned so much from your classes!).
A freelancer’s “rice bowl” aka meal ticket:
