With the launch of our design content marketplace, CreativeMarket.com coming soon we thought it would be fun to take a look at the most popular design elements in movie posters from 2011. After all, it's the carefully & creatively designed marketing materials for the movies are what get us to the theater.
(honestly, the best selling designs at the movie theater these days are the concessions stands... $6 for a bottle of water?!) The designers capture our attention, but the real success of a blockbuster movie will be determined by the quality of the film itself (not including #4 on the list below)... Let's take a look.

What Will 2012 Bring?

What movie are you most excited about for 2012? What design elements do you think will dominate this year?

I'm very excited to announce CreativeMarket.com, a new kind of marketplace for handcrafted, mousemade design content powered by a global community of creative people... just like you!

We have a simple, but important company mission: to make beautiful design simple & accessible to everyone.

This mission is something we've been passionately living here at COLOURlovers for the last 7 years. We started by building the world's best color community & creative inspiration site. By curating a supportive community for ideas to be shared and inspiration to be found, we've jump-started a massive amount of creative projects.

We then started building design tools like ColorSchemer and Seamless Studio that were simple & intuitive, but powerful & professional. These tools provide expert capabilities to novice creatives, and help them develop their skills.

Creative Market is the next piece of our mission that will help creatives easily access a wealth of beautiful design content for their projects. Whether it's finding a unique vector pattern for a textile, the perfect font with personality for a new logo, or any other kind of digital creative content that helps you produce something amazing.

Our friends at Etsy.com empowered the handmade goods revolution. We believe we can do the same for mousemade goods. Grab your creative tools and join us!
Click here to sign up for early access and get $5 free credit.

What It Means for COLOURlovers

We've helped a few members sell the patterns they've created here at COLOURlovers and it's an amazing feeling to give somebody access to tools and a platform so they can make some money doing what they love. I get stoked when I think about the day when one of your full-time jobs is simply being a COLOURlover. We've wanted to make it easier for members to sell their creative works, but not to over-commercialize the COLOURlovers site. We started building commercial tools into the site, but we realized the best thing for both COLOURlovers & CreativeMarket was to let them tell their own stories... in the best way they can.
COLOURlovers is a creation & inspiration community.
CreativeMarket is a marketplace for awesome design content.

They obviously work very well together, but by separating the sites we don't have to worry about commercializing COLOURlovers too much. We're very conscious of how special this place is. We can make CreativeMarket the best marketplace for finding, buying, selling & sharing the most unique and beautiful design content. And we'll make it super easy for COLOURlovers members to participate in the CreativeMarket if they want to.

You all have already created tens of thousands of beautiful patterns and unique shapes that are valuable, but we'll also be including other creative content types that designers need like Fonts, Photoshop Brushes, Gradients, Photos and more. We'll continue to make design software & apps that help you create the content that will be sold in the marketplace. We believe we can make the creation process for all of these kinds of creative content as simple & intuitive as we've done with our other apps.

I've seen how amazingly talented you all are, and I know that helping you make a living through your passion is how we can best live our mission.

Do You have Digital Content to Sell?

Are you a designer with beautiful vector shapes & patterns, fonts, brushes, photos, icons or other creative content you would love to sell in the Creative Market? Be one of the first publishers in our marketplace and let us promote your work to millions of people.

Contact Us to be one of our first publishers →

Thank you so much for the support, creativity & love over the past 7 years. We hope our new marketplace can reward you for all your hard work... Thanks for sharing the love.
+B

I'm continually amazed by the community you've all helped create here at COLOURlovers. We continually have one of the top communities on the web as noted by the Webby Awards (5x in a row!) and the atmosphere is one of support and creativity. In an age when it's so easy to put somebody else down anonymously online, you all keep sharing the love. Thank you.

And to support the awesome culture we have here, I wanted to develop a Community Agreement that we can show to new members & old that helps them understand what it means to be a member of this community. Below is my first draft at this, but this is for the community so I would love your feedback and thoughts too.

Part of the reason to write this is to help you all better understand, appreciate and support each other. I stay very connected to the community and find myself mediating more misunderstandings and disagreements than I probably need to. By creating an agreement for how we expect each other to act here, we'll make it easier for the community to help take care of itself.

COLOURlovers Community Agreement

Welcome to one of the best communities in the known universe. A place for sharing your creative ideas in a supportive & inspiring atmosphere. The following agreement is an outline of what we all expect of each other here at COLOURlovers. Please have a read of it and then continue sharing the COLOURlove.

What this community is all about.

This community is about creativity and inspiration. While color is at the foundation and heart of our community, it is much more than that. We want to continue to create the tools and platforms for everybody to discover their inner creative talent and to share it with the world. We recognize that each person has a unique perspective of the world and we encourage them to share it. By participating in the COLOURlovers community we hope everyone discovers more of their talents and helps somebody else discover theirs.

Our community is about: love, support, creativity, inspiration, sharing & inclusion.

Our community is NOT about: hate, hurting, attacking, criticizing & exclusion.

Some Participation Tips:

Constructive Criticism
It's ok to not love everything. It's fine to dislike a color, palette or pattern... but sharing your dislike in an attacking way won't be tolerated in our community. Saying something like "this palette sucks" will get your comment removed by and admin and possibly your account banned if you continue to attack the creations of other members. What you could say instead if you really have to comment on something you dislike is "I don't like this combination of colors." Or better yet, be specific why... but keep in mind, some people are sharing for the creative joy of it, not to get critical feedback. And if all else fails remember the old saying of "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

How to Address Problems
First, please try err on the side of assuming people are good. If it looks like somebody is being rude to another member or copying the work of another member without crediting them, ask them about it. Don't make accusations. Ask for more information. Most problems can be mediated when more information is gathered. The person who was "stealing" palettes and not crediting the original creator was simply a new member who didn't know how to bookmark them and they didn't want to lose them. The person being rude didn't understand a joke that was written without the full context. Assume people are good, and ask questions. Most problems can be solved nicely that way.

If you can't get more information to help mediate a problem or somebody is being flagrantly rude to other members. Please contact one of the COLOURlovers team members. You can do so by using the contact link at the bottom right of the page, or by sending any one of the team members a love note.

Closed Accounts
There are a few reasons why accounts may be closed. Sometimes it just means a member wanted to move in another direction with their life and they closed their own account. Other times account are closed for spamming or attacking other members.

Adult Language & Content
Swearing is generally called "adult language" but that doesn't mean that all adults swear or that they appreciate it. We have a swear word filter turned on by default to block the display of certain words. If you really enjoy a well placed f-bomb then you can turn that preference off in your account settings area.

Pornographic content isn't allowed on COLOURlovers. Some content exists in a gray area of artful nudity. There are members of all ages on this site, so try and be considerate of all of them when posting images that would be considered adult in nature. If they can't show it on television then there is a good chance it shouldn't be showed here.

Rights Violations
Again, please err on the side of assuming that another member didn't have malicious intentions if you come across something that looks like it violates the content rights of another person. On all content created with COLOURlovers we have rights settings that allow for different kinds of usage of that content. We expect all members to respect those rights. If you use content in COLOURlovers creations that are from outside of COLOURlovers, please property credit the source and only use content in the way that it is allowed under it's license.

If you would like to report a rights violation, please use the contact form and we'll look into it immediately.

Spam
We really don't like spam. Members caught spamming the site will have their accounts removed and their IPs banned. Spamming can be interpreted as heavily promoting something without adding much value. It's ok to promote and link to other content on your profile page and in the bio of your creations, but promoting links in comments that provide no contextual value will be flagged as spam. If you really have a hard time figuring out what an appropriate balance is between adding value & promoting... an acceptable ratio would be 100/1. ie, add value 100 times for every time you promote something.

You can report spam comments by clicking the red ! in the top right of any comment block. The team will review the flagged comment immediately.

Multiple Accounts
It is allowed for a single person to have multiple accounts on COLOURlovers so long as those other accounts are not used to game the site or mislead other members. Accounts that look to have suspicious activity will be looked into and possibly closed.

Love Notes
Love Notes are the in-site direct messages on COLOURlovers. You can send a Love Note to any other members directly. While this is a private area of the site, be careful about what information you share in Love Notes as there is no restrictions on the recipient sharing the information publicly.

Personal Disagreements
The world is a big place and we have members from every corner of it. With such a diverse group of people there are sure to be some times when two members simply don't get along with each other. Until more features get built to help members block/ignore members they disagree with, please simply do your best to ignore other members that upset you. And if a member has respectfully asked you to ignore them and leave them alone, please honor their request.

-----------------------------------------------

Does this sound like a good agreement for our community? Does it cover everything that might be confusing about how to participate here in a positive & supportive way?

Your email registered on COLOURlovers will receive a mighty delicious treat today! That's right! Today we sent out the very first newsletter in the history of COLOURlovers. From now forward, you will know every Tuesday as - Huesday!

You can expect to receive this beautiful Huesday newsletter each week to get your fill of colorful ideas, inspiration and special goodies (aka giveaways, contests, announcements and the like) sometimes only available in the weekly Huesday mailing.

patterns featured this Huesday: The Dark Snow | Dulce Aroma | santa came to town

As you might know, we currently hand pick colors, palettes, patterns for daily Facebook and Twitter features (you are notified if your creation was featured). Now, Huesday will be another excellent platform for member creations to be featured because there are so many fantastic patterns, palettes and shapes to know about. We will include most popular as well as some hand-picked.

more patterns featured this Huesday: it's raining! | Duckling's Splash | sight

Don't miss out on getting some great inspiration, awesome announcements and must know COLOURlovin news each and every colorful Huesday.

Templates to the featured patterns:

It’s here! Some consider it a plague, some consider it a shopaholics dream, and some people just want a new pair of socks at rock-bottom prices. That’s right, the full contact sport of Black Friday has returned for another year. Which brings me to wonder, why do they call this day of awesome deals and big crowds black? Here are a few interesting theories I've pulled together…

Original credit for the phrase is given to the plunging gold prices way back in 1864 that started a panic in the stock market, thus a very black Friday indeed.

(photos: source | source)

Then, in the late 1960s, Philadelphia newspapers borrowed the phrase to describe the dark masses of shoppers crowding the stores. Sounds kind of creepy I know, but let’s imagine them wearing festive holiday colors and the picture isn’t so bleak.

Later on, this idea was clarified to mean that the crowds increased profits, thus the black ink on the accounting balance sheets is why it is called Black Friday.

Tweak this theory again and black now represents the day retailers make a profit or break the bank. Ominous, I know.

Whatever the origin, by the time the 1990s rolled around, Black Friday had turned into a nationwide retail holiday (albeit unofficial). Since then its fame has grown, and now it is the season’s biggest shopping day of the year (says market research firm ShopperTrak).

Whether you brave the crowds, hide at home, or enjoy a regular day at work (with a  little crowd control), be safe and have a happy Black Friday from all of us at COLOURlovers!

I often hear COLOURlovers described as a place to help people find great colors... "Like for when you're looking for colors to paint your kitchen or bedroom." Problem is, it has been hard to take a color on our site and find a matching paint color in the real world.

So, we're super excited to announce a partnership with Martha Stewart Living™ to get her paint colors on the millions of colors, palettes & patterns pages here at COLOURlovers... By far making this site the biggest color resource for paint color inspiration!

I've had the pleasure of spending some time at the Martha Stewart HQ in New York city and it's like Santa's workshop for creatives. Each room is full of people making awesome stuff... pastries in this room, ornaments in that room... It's the kind of place any creative/crafty person dreams of being locked in over night. Since Martha Stewart and her creative empire are all about crafting & creating... we're thrilled to work with her and all the awesome people at MSLO. The addition of these paints to the site is going to open so many great opportunities for interior designers & decorators, and even just somebody looking to add some pop to a boring white wall.

Finding the Paint Colors Your Love

Wherever a color is displayed on our site, along with the HEX & RGB numbers for that color we'll also show you the closest matching Martha Stewart Living paint color. And every display of that paint color will link you to the Home Depot site where the Martha Stewart Living paints are exclusively sold. From the Home Depot site you can easily & affordably try out a paint tester to make sure you love the color.

Note on Color Matching: Since more colors (16 Million) can exist on a computer screen compared to paint colors... Not every color on our site will be a perfect match to a paint color, but we're working hard on perfecting the matching logic so the color that you're loving here can be the color you're loving on your walls.

Martha Stewart’s 280 custom colors are inspired by themes found in nature and the home. Martha Stewart Living also supports the entire decorating project through an innovative color coordination system. Symbols match color families and themes, and coordinate with other household products throughout the store like rugs, furniture, and storage.

Colorful Story Telling with Paint

Along with adding the paint colors to the site, we'll be showcasing some of the beautiful home images from Martha Stewart in our Home Inspirations & Trends section of our site as well as some write-ups here in the blog. Having the ability to link colors we love to paint colors is really going to add a whole new layer of awesome to the site!

Paint Your Space. Share It With the World!

When you use this new feature to paint a wall in one of the spaces in which you live, make sure you post up a picture in the comments. We'll be showcasing a gallery of awesome painted spaces soon and I hope yours will be included.

Understanding color can be a daunting task with many dead ends. Have you ever taken a color theory class only to be left feeling like it didn’t teach you anything to do with applying color in the real world?

Maybe you have an awesome natural instinct for putting together cohesive palettes or colorizing fabulous patterns perfectly, but why are you so good at it? Validating the why, where and when of color will change your entire outlook on color and what it can do to your personal or professional life.

Color opportunities exist in many industries. Companies need color design expertise to guide them through the many choices they have to make as a successful business. Choices they must make involving color range from advertising, product design, branding and many more. You need credible, verifiable information to back up your decisions as a consultant or designer and you need more than a simple love for color to get you there.

The DNA11 Palette Contest has come to a close with a staggering 6,000 plus entries of which one (1) winner and four (4) runner-ups are now announced! The mix of science and art proved to be quite intriguing. So without further delay, the winner is...

Under my Skin by BerryColor

BerryColor won a palette-customized, 24 x 36” DNA Portrait. Additionally, this beautiful palette will be added to the DNA11 collection for future use in their line of personalized DNA Art.

I can't even count the number of hours I've logged on different consoles since I was a kid... it's in the thousands for sure. From my early years saving the princess and beating Ganon to getting headshots and fragging noobs, as I've grown up, so have the technologies that power the video game experience.

With the changes in technology have come richer visual experiences. Starting with only a few dozen colors in the first systems to millions of colors in our current ones. We're at the end of one generation now... What awesome new ways to play are coming next?

Our current generation of video game consoles (xbox 360, Wii, PlayStation 3) is the 7th generation, with the first starting in the 1970s. A lot can happen in several generations! If you think about generations in human terms (in the US it's around 25 years) then video games have been around since the early 1800s... and way back then we were just getting some technologies like the automated printing press, the first photo and first telegraph. In a way those early technologies helped us end up with the visual, connected video games we have today.

Let's take a look at the colorful history of video games... ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A select start!

 
What was your favorite video game? Remember what the color palette was like? Show us.

Pumpkin orange and midnight black—the predominant colors of Halloween combine the Autumn season with darkness and scary entities.

(source)

But how did these colors really come to dominate this most unusual holiday? The truth is, when it comes to the question of the origin of the Halloween colors, it can be hard to separate the opinions from the facts.

Unbleached beeswax candles (source | source)

The most common opinion about where the colors originated is steeped in the rich history of the Celtics and the Druids, with the burning of unbleached beeswax candles (orange) and ceremonial caskets draped in a black cloth.

Feng Shui candles are said to help create peace in the center of your house (source)

Now, let’s step into the world of Feng Shui, where a balance of energy reigns supreme. Believers of Feng Shui feel that the colors of orange and black were chosen because they are on opposite sides of the energy spectrum: orange is warm, happy, lively, and brings to mind the bounty of the fall harvest, while black represents mystery, void, power and protection (source).

(leaves source)

The most obvious answer to this question is that the classic color of Autumn is orange, while black can be equated with the approaching darkness of winter.

spider glasses | felted toys | napkins | Bunting 

And, if you want to get really extreme, some people claim that black and orange were the only colors left after Christmas took red and green, and Easter took all of the pastels.

Of course, Halloween colors are not just limited to orange and black, you will also see a lot of blood red, eerie green, ghostly white and deep purples. So, where do these colors come into play? Here is a plausible explanation.

Celtic wheel of the year (source)

Going back to the Celtic festival of Samhain in 700 B.C., it signified the end of the harvest and the approaching of winter, or the end of one year and the start of another. The Celts believed that ancestral spirits joined them on this day when the past and the present are about to cross paths, which is why it was also considered a “day of the dead.”(source)

goblin | bat necklace | brooch | Boo

All of the Halloween colors seem to implicate some kind of connection to death and dying. Red is a classic implication of blood, fire and demons, while green represents goblins, monsters, and zombies. Purple draws in a bit of the supernatural and mysticism, while white reflects ghosts, mummies and a full moon.

Stepping away from color for a moment, Halloween is also dominated by an abundance of Jack-o-lanterns and children out trick-or-treating. These traditions also have an interesting origin.

Stingy Jack (source)

Jack-o-lanterns trace back to the Irish myth of Stingy Jack who died and, finding himself rejected by both heaven and hell, was forced to roam the darkness seeking a resting place for his soul. Legend has it that he hollowed out a turnip and used it to carry a coal to light his way. This said, the first Jack-o-lanterns were carved in turnips, and only changed to pumpkins when the tradition was brought to America.

jack-o-lanterns (source)

Trick-or-treating came about during the Great Irish Potato Famine. On Halloween, peasants would beg for food from the wealthy. They played practical jokes on those that refused to give them something. So, to avoid being tricked, the wealthy gave out cookies, candies, and fruit. It is easy to see how this turned into modern-day trick-or-treating. (source)

bracelet | plastic mustaches / lips | zombie clips | toy

No matter what history tells us, the Halloween color palette we see today is warm, bright, fun, and sometimes a little spooky. Each color has a place in the holiday and can find a place in your life as well, whether you are wearing it, eating it, decorating with it, or simply reading about it. So, have a happy, safe and colorful Halloween!

header credit: purple bats

Halloween Colors