Be the next GelaSkins artist! Gelaskins works with some of the world's finest talent to bring stunning art to any device. You could be the next artist to be featured on GelaSkins and have your pattern available worldwide!

GelaSkins is passionate about great design which is why you'll find some of world's most creative minds gracing their pages. A portion of each skin, case or print sold goes directly to the creator, helping to support and promote independent artists everywhere. Pretty neat, right?

The HardCase is the newest addition to the product family. It is a tough polycarbonate case made to protect iPhones and impact damage and everyday wear-and-tear. Simple to install and remove, the one-piece snap-on construction holds tight for maximum protection. The HardCase allows for easy access to buttons and is compatible with charging cables and screen protectors.

So let's get down to business! Here are the details to enter our contest and possibly win the fabulous prices below.

How to enter:

Submit one of your patterns here. Just select a pattern template that you designed and colored and apply it to the hardcase... Easy as that! Give it a try.

Prizes:

1st place prize: Winner will become the next GelaSkins artist, and will collect royalties on the sale of their design to our customers.

Runners Up: The 2nd-5th runners up will receive $100 gift card towards custom GelaSkins featuring your pattern.

The 1st place winner will be chosen by GelaSkins but the 2nd-5th place winners will be chosen via voting by your community. Once you create your submission, make sure to check out the other submissions and vote for your favorites.

We will be announcing the winner on June 5! Good luck!

View all the entries here: Gelaskins Hardcase Entries.

Our friends at HOW have their grand event planned for next month in Boston. This creative conference is one of the biggest I've ever been to and brings in fine people from all over the world. Not only will we be there, we'll be providing a little colorful entertainment with our Palettes in Real Life interactive exhibit. Come join us and a few thousands other creative people for an awesome time! (I'll also be there signing copies of Color Inspirations, and I'd love to have you sign mine!)

Register for HOW Design Live using the code "COLOUR" and get $100 of the admission price.

HOW Design Live - Boston
In 2012, Boston is the meeting point for the biggest gathering of designers, freelancers, creative team managers, and other creative professionals in the country. That much creative energy under one roof? It’s a recipe for revolutionary ideas and life-changing inspiration. You’ll rethink your approach to work and life, connect with like-minded allies, hear from creative visionaries, and discover new tools to make your job more satisfying and productive than ever before.

Real Life Color Palettes!

We'd had the pleasure of making palettes in real life with our members a few times, and each time we do it we're impressed with your creativity and energy. We're excited to bring the experience to the weekend fun at HOW Design Live. Find us and make a palette with us! Some photos from our last palette making experience can be viewed below:

Bubs | "Readyforlove" | COLOURlover | @Bubs 

Aaron Epstein | "let there be light" | aepstein | 

Molly Bermea | "Ooga Booga"  | mollybermea @mollybermea

Serafina Bermea | "Goo Goo, Ga Ga" 

Greg Hennes, COLOURlovers Official Photographer | "pink parts are punk" | Greg Hennes

Toti | "Ligero" | @patrullaverde

Gail Towey | "Sorbet" | Martha Stewart

Alice Fisk MacKenzie | "Orange Reality"

See the rest of the Palettes in Real Life from the Color Conference here.

Register for HOW Design Live using the code "COLOUR" and get $100 of the admission price.

You wouldn't even know that the Roomba is a vacuum when looking through these photos. The idea of turning everyday things into art work is something more creatives thrive on, and this is no exception.

The "Roomba Art" series was originally produced by Tobias Baumgartner, Marcus Brandenburger, Tom Kamphans, Alexander Kroeller, and Christiane Schmidt of the IBR Algorithm Group and Braunschweig University of Technology. "We had a swarm of seven Roombas, each with a differently colored LED on top. The roombas are operating at the same time -- can you spot the collisions?" Source

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After this initial series was created several others tried their version of such an idea and pretty soon various versions of this concept were created and posted online. Hope you enjoy the round-up we have put together.

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Have any of you tried this yet? Would love to hear your thoughts on this awesome photo series and creative concept.

Zazzle is one of those totally awesome online brands that has just about everything you could wish for on one website. Aside from offering so many different products, Zazzle also gives you the chance to customize your own. Make sure you check out their selection of goods.

Did you all enjoy creating iPad cases for our Zazzle contest? I hope so. There were so many fabulous entries, you guys are great at creating some inspiring pieces. So thank you for entering.

Today we are here to announce the winners of the Zazzle contest.

• Grand prize winner will receive $500 + a copy of their winning iPad Sleeve
• 1 Runner-up will receive $100 Zazzle gift certificate + copy of their iPad Sleeve
• 2 Honorable mentions will receive $50 Zazzle gift certificates + copies of their iPad Sleeves

The runner-up who will be receiving a $100 Zazzle gift certificate + copy of their iPad Sleeve is: Vintage Flowers iPad Sleeve by HazelAgnes.

The 2 Honorable mentions who will be receiving a $50 Zazzle gift certificates + copies of their iPad Sleeves: PATTERN {chevron 011} by Schatzibrown

And finally, Vintage Floral by pinkinkstudio

Congrats to all the winners! Thank you so much to everyone who entered the Zazzle contest. I hope you had a lot of fun with this contest and we are excited to keep bringing you more.

It has been quite a fun week over here at COLOURlovers. Between our iPad contest with Zazzle, book review on the new Smashing Magazine book, Redesign The Web and so much more!

FAVORITE BLOG POSTS:

Some of our favorite blog posts from this week are crafty projects you can do with magazine pages and some fabulously colorful digital art by Andy Gilmore! Also, Zazzle is hosting a COLOURlovers iPad Design contest! If you haven't entered, now is the chance, the winner will receive a $500 cash prize.

CMYLK by DESIGN MILK

Design Milk (one of our fave blogs over here at COLOURlovers) has created a brand new column called "CMYLK". Each week, they round up some images – products, interiors, and art – and their associated COLOURlovers color palettes to inspire and delight. This week, features some fabulous paintings by Kristy Gammill. Check out the blog post for more palettes!

Do you "like" us on Facebook? Well you should be because we post awesome photos like those below all week long!

A few weeks back we held a Betabrand sock design contest! The 3 winning designs are now listed for pre-order on the Betabrand website! Pre-order your pack now!

LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB

LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:

• The entire process of creating and building this colorful little room is posted on Design Milk Megan Geckler for Bobble.
• House Beattiful shows us 6 Cheery Yellow Bathrooms. This is great inspiration for those of you looking to spruce up your bathroom for the summer.
• If you haven't had the chance to get yourself a few Pantone Coffee Mugs, now might be a good time to go grab them.

Have any colorful posts you have seen yourself? Share them in the comments below! See you next week with some more colorful round-ups!

We are very excited to review the brand new Smashing Magazine book, REDESIGN THE WEB.  I'll start by saying that I would not only recommend this book to every designer, but it is a must for any person who is in the position to make decisions about their website. Why do I think this? Understanding the how and why behind design allows you to learn the types of questions you should be asking about your website and will help the entire design process immensely.

Let's start by taking a look at the table of contents:

Chapter 1, The Business Side of Redesign, was my favorite chapter in the book. Focusing on the business of design is by far the most important part. This concept can sometimes be overlooked when you get caught up in "making it pretty". "The most powerful defense against fashion is simple: we must ask why." Great tip to try next time your clients wants a "make my website look like that" design.

Another great point brought up in this chapter is the designer-client relationship. I agree that many of these relationships are broken. Without the client understanding the how and why behind your work they tend to focus on the looks, not the purpose. Here are some pointers to create a better relationship.

Chapter 2 dives into the technical needs of a company and offers some basic advice for clients when it comes to exercising their options and choosing the right platforms for their needs. This includes everything from choosing the right content management system to your commerce platform.

The following chapters cover the basics of HTML5, the great advantages of using CSS3, and some of the new features and benefits both of these languages have to offer. It also touches upon Javascript and some tricks to replace complex JQuery. If you are familiar with both HTML + CSS, you will understand the tips and pointers these chapters have to offer. Here is just an example of what you will find:

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Chapter 7 goes over a variety of Photoshop tools at your disposal. Most of these techniques are pretty basic if you are a Photoshop know-it-all, however there might be a few that you didn't know about. If you are new to photoshop, this chapter is a perfect way to learn some new techniques. Here is an example of  from the book:

The chapter, Designing With Personality, was another stand out chapter of this book. Personality really is what sets brands apart. Below are some examples listed of the benefits of creating a personality.

The concept below is extremely valuable. Copywriting isn't always taken into account in design, but in terms of building a brand with personality, it is a very key element that must be given some thought.

A great example quoted from Chapter 10: "GE made its giant corporation feel more humanly by sharing the individual personality of its workforce. It showed us the passion and pride it has for its craft. and we felt it.

There is a landing page strategy that can absolutely benefit you, further than getting early access sign-ups, that is brought up in this book. This is known as the "hidden survey". You can gauge interest and demand of a product that hasn't even been built yet just by monitoring the number of early-access sign ups. Another great way is offering a short "Help Us Build Something You Want" survey asking them a few short questions geared toward getting valuable information that you can use. Getting to know the people that use your product is the best way to build a product.

If you are just starting in the field of design, this book is definitely for you. It will quickly get you up to speed and give you some great pointers that will most improve your current workflow.

If you are well into the field of design this book might not offer entirely new concepts. Still, there is always an opportunity to learn and overall, it is definitely worth reading to see what new ideas you can take away from it.

Get your copy of the new Smashing Magazine book, Redesign The Web.

When lots of people gather in a park and fly kites together, the outcome is one incredibly colorful sky. Here are some  photos from Kite Fest in Austin, Texas.

What colors do you see when you look at these shots? Woud love to see what color palettes and patterns you COLOURlovers come up with!

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Has anyone attended any fun and colorful activities recently? Would love to see what you are all doing!

Today we are here with a really fun iPad sleeve design contest brought to you by Zazzle. Have you taken the time to play on  Zazzle yet?

The site is filled with so many awesome products from iPhone + iPad cases, office products, clothing and accessories and just about everything else you could want. What's more, they have an option for you to go ahead and design your own pieces. Want to put your artwork on t-shirts? Zazzle can do that!

We are excited to announce the Zazzle iPad sleeve design contest. We are calling upon the COLOURlovers community to design the coolest sleeve you can through zazzle.com. Once you have created something you love, submit the design and share it so you can get lots of votes on your submission.

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How it Works:

Participants will be designing an iPad sleeve using the design tool on zazzle.com. Here is how to enter:

• Create a Zazzle Account (It’s free!)
• Download our iPad Sleeve Templates and use them to create your design.
• Go here , select the sleeve you’d like to create and use your design to finalize your entry.
• “Post for Sale” (red link towards the bottom right) your iPad Sleeve with the tag colourloversipadcontest in the Zazzle Marketplace

For the official rules, find out more on zazzle.com. You’re done! Now you can go vote for your favorites but clicking the “like” button below the entry!

The Prizes:

• Grand prize winner will receive $500 + a copy of their winning iPad Sleeve
• 1 Runner-up will receive $100 Zazzle gift certificate + copy of their iPad Sleeve
• 2 Honorable mentions will receive $50 Zazzle gift certificates + copies of their iPad Sleeves

We will be announcing the winners on May 14, 2012. Good Luck to all and happy designing!

Did you know that adding foods to your diet that are high in pigmentation is one of the best things that you could do for your health and creativity? Broccoli, carrots, beets, peas, blueberries, raspberries, cherries, etc. all contain whopping doses of antioxidants, the super-hero of the super-fit, chasing away free radicals that cause disease and degeneration.

Every runway supermodel knows that the key to staying slim and shiny is to avoid foods that are white, or pale in color—potatoes, breads, pastas, white rice, sugar—and to eat fabulously colorful foods that are ALIVE and JUICY.

Not only will brightly colored foods make you a brightly colored person, (add a rosy glow to your cheeks, bring the sparkle and shimmer back to your eyes) they become a cheerful accent splash of color to your kitchen when stacked in a bowl near the Kitchen-Aid or french press, and make a lively center-piece for the dinner table.

Dust off that brightly painted Mexican-ceramic bowl and fill it up with the season's best apples and oranges and color your world from the inside out.

As individuals, we change our colors often. We reflect our inner palettes in what we wear, what we buy, where we cast our gaze. We have the freedom to engage unlimited combinations whenever we see fit.

But what about the colors of the websites we visit daily? Do websites shift in these same ways, or even at this rate? Over the course of a year we change our color preferences untold times, but looking at how websites evolve over a similar time period indicates something quite different.

I recently examined a representative sample of websites that have gone through a significant redesign in the last year to analyze just how much, if at all, these websites changed in terms of their inner color palettes. These few examples represent a trend I noticed - that some websites have gone through massive shifts in layout, usability, and general structure. In comparing their palettes, however, you don't see such shifting.

In the example of target.com below, you can see that there has been an obvious overhaul of structure, reorganizing the site completely. While there is a subtle increase in a practical implementation of color 'coding' (notably pink to indicate a 'spring' item and brighter link colors), the base of the palette remains the same. This shows that Target knows the importance of evolving functionality (and product) independent of base branding colors.

Another great example of a structural overhaul is bankofamerica.com. Here you can see they've moved to a centered layout and are using a few brighter blues for specific calls to action, but again, the remainder of the palette remains unchanged.

Another website I took a look at was twitter.com, which went through somewhat of a transformation last year. Save for a button color change (for the better) the base of their palette and branding remains the same.

Of particular interest this past year were the transformations undertaken on dennys.com. Around July last year they went with an overhaul not just of structure but of color as well. I don’t think the color portion of the overhaul was that successful, as a look around six months later shows they've reversed their direction. They've gone closer to what they had previous to the saturated yellow look, dialing back to a more traditional food-friendly palette of light tans/browns and creamy whites. Did Denny’s find out how much is too much? Was bright yellow too much of a stretch from what is traditionally a red-dominated industry?

In the case of our recent Purple.us redesign, you can see that we’ve maintained the base of the palette, only adding a select aqua to draw emphasis to the site’s informational hierarchy. Again, you can see how important the core of a palette is to the site’s overall presentation.

It is important to understand that while sites adapt and alter in various ways and degrees, there are some decisions that must be absolutely correct in early stages of development, namely color. Color delineates brand. Color can define a site. Color resonates in the mind of the user, whether they notice or not. Color is vital. If a website requires modifications, initial color choice and primary concepts must be considered just as vital.