In the beginning, a few years back, when I first started designing web sites, I designed sites on what I thought looked good. After they were built, I realized that they looked like crap. They layout, the color, the content, and the usability. As I progressed, I learned more and more even though I didn't completely know or understand the theories and practices behind web design. Now, as my designs' quality increase, I feel like in order to really fine tune everything, I need to know and understand every aspect of every theory involving design.
My first query into the theories is about color theory. This is one of my favorite and toughest subjects. Every child learns colors in school and they learn what color is what; green is for the grass, blue is the sky and ocean, orange is the sun etc.. But what they don't learn is the theory behind all these visible colors, like red, green, and blue are the primary colors of light. Even though we were all taught it was red, blue and yellow. I could go on forever about it and not make any sense... so rather then seem like an illiterate fool, I am just going to talk about this book: Designer's Color Manual.
It's pretty... with all the colors and pictures. Seriously, it is really well laid out, images and diagrams to explain the different concepts and ideas. There is a lot of information that a self taught designer should know and for me, it will help with designing our landscape too... silly reason to enjoy a book, but I am beginning to enjoy landscape design too now. I was afraid of putting together a mish-mash of colors in our yard, so now I am learning about color theory and soon I will be able to design a better web page and maybe even a landscape, since color is what we all recognize before text, right?
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