Introducing...PLYWERK, an eco-conscious photo mounting and art panel company based in Portland Oregon. They work with professional artists, photographers, interior designers, point and shoot photographers, parents, and everyone in between!

Art pieces are a made up of your print adhered to a Plywerk Panel to create a beautifully natural piece of wall art. Gorgeous bamboo or maple are offered for the wood options.

Plywerk Anatomy 101

Bamboo & Maple Plywerk Panels

COLOURlovers has recently become a Pro Partner of PLYWERK. Why is this super notable to mention? Because you're going to get the best, most amazing deals ever when you create an account (which is free). These deals are customized to COLOURlovers Members Only under the Prodeal membership (which is also free). Pretty sweet huh?

We know you love color so here's a way to bring that pop to work with some very colorful desk supplies. Why shouldn't your every day workspace be more fun?! Poppin gives you the chance to fix up your drab cubicle and turn it into a space that’s inspirational, more functional and much happier.

The Giveaway: An Entire Desk Top Set!

Poppin is giving away an entire Desk Top Set! You will have the option to mix it up or keep 'em all the same color if you wish.

Desk Top Set ($100+ Retail Value):

• In Boxes
• Desk Set (2 Pencil Cups and 2 Desk Trays)
• Tape Dispensers
• Stapler
• Staple Remover
• Scissors
• Rulers
• XXL Binder Clips
• Signature Pens
• Highlighters
• Calculator
• Small Soft Cover Notebook
• Medium Soft Cover Notebook

The Contest: Desk Set Color Hunt

Today through next Tuesday we're going to play a game and choose a random winner from the entries (in the comments). What you have to do:

2. 1.) Go to Poppin.com (there's also a search by color page)
3. 2.) Hunt for a 5-color palette entry. This means you must find FIVE (different) items you can combine in to a set.
4. 3.) Create a color palette for those five items on COLOURlovers.com (Basic | COPASO | FROM A PHOTO).
5. 4.) Post the images of the items and the palette in the comment section to this post.

EXAMPLE:

NEED HELP? Send me a Love Note me (mollybermea) if you do not know how to insert an image or the palette badge.

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Now here's to some fun poppin-ized desktops!

Poppin Colors:

You may use these colors as reference to create your palettes - just copy the HEX#.

Additionally, Poppin is giving you 15% OFF through Tuesday / Contest End, with code "COLOUR" at Poppin.com. Enjoy!

header credit:

HP is not involved with this giveaway contest

Designing promotional materials for print as a small business or freelancer can be daunting; but shouldn't be. With business cards, post cards, fliers and such - your canvas is small so keep it simple, direct and most of all - attention grabbing!

Apple has taken the clean white look (which has been copied over and over), your bank has taken the look using stock photos of "happy customers", your competitor is using "cute" clipart on their fliers... so what are you going to do to stand out? When your postcard turns up in the mail, what will keep your recipients attention?

source

Pop it with Pop Color.

Without getting in to too much detail of Pop Culture itself, I'm going to focus on color (of course). If you've learned anything from the color use of Pop Culture, it should be,"LOOK AT ME!!!"

Do not mistake Pop Color for simply tossing bright colors down to grab attention. Using Flourecents or Astrobrights will not cut it. Pop Color is a method that almost resists the rules of combination itself, but it works!

For example, Andy Warhol's famous Marilyn Monroe piece very marvelously displays a combination of colors that almost defy how colors should be used together - but it obviously grabbed attention.

Andy Warhol - Marilyn Monroe

So Let's Pop Your Print!

Keep the color palette minimal, bright and lusty or muted but defiant. It doesn't always have to be screaming with color, but make smart design choices.

Some of you may already know our own sec9586, some of you may have just heard of her as the designer of the Betabrand plaid pattern, "Betabrand2" in our contest, "Color a Plaid Shirt Contest by Betabrand + COLOURlovers". Either way, we're featuring her today so you can get to know her even better!

Shawna Crouch, aka "sec9586", is the owner / operator of CrouchDesign. She attended Murray State University, where she graduated with a BS in Studio Art/Graphic Design in 2009, and specializes primarily in print design. Along with her designing day job, she runs a small shop on Zazzle as CrouchDesign, where she offers freelance design services. She also has an Etsy shop,  AquaNetNightmare, set to reopen September 1st, 2011 which will offer jewelry, cards, invitations, stationary and drawings.

Shawna continually uses COLOURlovers in every which way for both work and fun. Let's take a peek at how she does it...

When it comes to your marketing arsenal as a businessperson, one of the greatest workhorses you have is your business card. From prospects to customers, your business card tells the world who you are and what you do. The question is: is it telling the story you want it to?

What Makes an Effective Business Card

What makes an effective business card has changed over time. In 2000, American Psycho taught us that clean, white or eggshell cards were the creme de la creme of business status symbols.

These days, people are turning to color as a way to stand out and be more memorable to contacts.

So, how do you choose when and where to use color or what color to use, for that matter?

There’s nothing quite like getting a new book; UPS knows me by my first name because I order so many! I woke up with this question this morning: is there a correlation between the color of a book’s cover, digital or physical, and its success within its genre? I took a look at several New York Times Bestseller lists to find out.

Bestselling Fiction

In the top 5 books in fiction, we see primarily copper, gold, silver, and ochre in spades and accents of lavender and bright blue. Granted, 3 of the 5 are from the same author, which might skew the results a bit, but nonetheless, warm colors and metallics rule the day for this genre. This makes sense as the 3 books by George R.R. Martin all deal with a world of royalty and opulence.

Bestselling Nonfiction

Of the five books present in the nonfiction category, we find a lot of warm colors, again. Here though, they are rich, non-metallic, and darker - much like the subject matter they enrobe. Looking at the covers, we see a range of colors from a memoir done up in nostalgic cream to a first person account of heaven wrapped in joyful yellow to a vibrant orange cover of a tale of scientific discovery. The two historical books in this genre are a sepia-toned look back World War II next to a similarly themed look at an American family’s time in Hitler’s Berlin.

The top selling nonfiction books show us, in color and in subject matter, that real life is a dizzying mix of dark and bright, grand and personal, recollective and modern.

Bestselling Hardcover Graphic Novels

Not quite as bold as comic books meant for children, the best selling graphic novels’ covers present us with a color palette of hues as dark and straightforward as the stories they portray. Whether looking at the modern yellow and gray of the newest X-Men novel or the dingy vintage orange of “Paying for It,” a seemingly seedy account of one man’s experience being a john, all the covers in this category allude to the grittier stories to be found in their pages.

Bestselling Children’s Chapter Books

Arguably the brightest covers of all those so far, it is appropriate that the top 5 children’s books give us saturated primaries, lapping flames, and bright lettering with only one black and white cover. The two books boasting primary colors deal with more simplistic subject matter while the flame-licked cover of “The Throne of Fire” sits squarely in the jewel-toned fantasy world where “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” is well-served by the black and white of its cover, conjuring thoughts of long-lost mysteries yearning to be solved.

What color trends have you noticed in your book list, lovers? I’d love to compare notes.

Rise Above,
Stephan

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If you’re a big film, tv, or theatre buff, you’ve probably witnessed a fair amount of subtext. This principle can be applied to more than just those mediums though! Today, we explore how you use the lens of subtext to look at your website and improve your digital presence by uniting your color scheme with your actual text.

First though, what is subtext? Think about it as the underlying theme or message in a conversation. In film, it can be seen with lighting choices, costumes, a character’s body language and really anything that isn’t apart of the actual dialog. I’ll use the movie Jurassic Park as an example.

Business or fan pages on Facebook are becoming increasingly used by small businesses. They allow for exposure to prospective customers as well as continued communication to current clientele, so their popularity is pretty justified!

If you're looking to create a fan page for your small business, your best bet is to present a polished experience for your fans (and potential fans) by designing a landing page for your profile. It’s a chance for you to tell users what you’re about, what you’re doing on Facebook, and ultimately why they should “like” you. We had the pleasure of creating just such a page for our client, Sterling Finance Company.

There’s no doubt that it’s valuable, but creating that page also presents you with a number of variables to decide on. This post explores several solutions via our favorite topic at COLOURlovers: Color!

Like so many houses on so many home makeover shows, some business’ websites simply need a makeover. Getting a website redesign doesn’t mean that the business itself doesn’t deliver amazing work, they could even be the best in their industry, it just means they aren’t articulating it digitally...yet!

While there are many aspects to a successful makeover, the most important is color choice. Think back to those TV shows. Arguably the largest change in the house with a purple exterior and bright teal accents was the switch to mature, subdued pebble-tones accenting a calm, cool columbia blue. Or the living room done in carnation pink with lemon-yellow daisies transformed to buttercream trim on pale moss walls.

Whether dealing with a house or a website, color is the most visually transformative aspect of any makeover. While content, layout, and user experience are inextricably tied to great digital design (I can’t even begin to explain how important each of those are...), the use of color will be our focus today in examining digital metamorphoses.

From Craptacular to Banktacular!

When we were approached by Central Florida Postal Credit Union to give their brand and their site a facelift, we had our work cut out for us. After initial strategy meetings, we were able to suss out what they wanted their digital brand to say about them: CFPCU is reliable and caring. That meant that a visit to their site needed to be enjoyable, educational, and easy to navigate.

Unfortunately, their old site did not relay that clearly.

While the colors present aren’t the most clash-worthy I’ve ever seen (they’re simply a muted variation of primary colors), those colors say soft, calm harmony as opposed to trusted, attentive, and dependable.

Many of you know about our COLOURlovers iPhone App - ColorSchemer Touch, but do you know all you can do with it? I wanted to do a quick highlight of all it's features, so let's get down to it!

At this point in development, ColorSchemer Touch allows you to do the following:

Peruse COLOURlovers current Palette Creations... tapping once on a palette will bring you to the Palette information.

Palette Information includes author, loves, views, comments, rank and when it was created along with the colors used.

Full Screen - To get a bigger and more beautiful show all this palette has to offer, just tap on it (again in the information screen) and it will expand full screen. WOW!

Color information includes the COLOURlovers original titles as the default display.

Just tap once over the color area to display the Hex Values for each color, tap again to see the RGB values and another tap brings you back to the original titles.

Creating Palettes in So Many Ways!

There are so many cool tools for creating your own palettes!

• - Use the standard color wheel
• - Play around with LiveSchemes (which may need it's very own post to cover how cool it is)
• - Use PhotoSchemer to grab colors from photos you have on your iPhone (or take a new photo).
• - Or use the Spectrum

And Yes, you can make palettes with varying widths!

When you're done making a palette, why not share it?!

I'll end with answering some questions that might or have already come up...

• - Yes, we're hoping to develop an Android version at some point in the future.
  
• - Yes, eventually it will have more COLOURlovers site features on it (such as perusing patterns!).

The Grand Giveaway!

WeI'd like to give away FIVE copies of ColorSchemer Touch! Tell us how you would use the app if you had a copy and how much you dearly want it. :)

If you already own it, please feel free to let us know how you use it!

You have until Friday, July 22nd, 2011. Entries will stop at 1pm (USA PST).

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