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?

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.

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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There are some colors, when paired together, that just look good. They make sense, they match. There are also those colors which, put side by side, make your eyes burn. Ok, maybe not actually burn, but you know what I mean.

The question is: why? Why do certain color combinations look serene or exciting and others garish or completely boring? I want to explore the why of color combinations, some of the science and some of the psychology and how you, as a business person, can put those colors to work for you.

Covering Some Color Basics - Intro to Color Theory 101

Before we dive into the “why” of certain color schemes and how to use them to speak to your potential clients, let’s cover some color basics to make sure we’re all on the same page. COLOURlover pros and veterans, feel free to jump to the next section.

For the purpose of this post, I’ll be using the Red/Yellow/Blue color model as the primary colors on our subtractive color wheel (this subtractive wheel is what painters and artists use). For a look at the use of the Cyan/Magenta/Yellow color model used by printers, feel free to take a look at our recents posts discussing RGB versus CMYK conversions.

The Red/Yellow/Blue color model is what most of us grew up learning. Arranged in correspondence with the wavelengths of light, the original color wheel was invented by Isaac Newton. We wrote a complete history of the various color wheels recently, if you are curious and want to know more.

The color wheel that most are familiar with usually looks like this:

Secondary colors on this wheel are made by combining 2 primary colors. Likewise, tertiary colors are formed by mixing a primary and a secondary hue.

Source: Eva Williams

Hi Lovers! I’m super excited to have the opportunity to share my projects and musings with you here on COLOURlovers. Who am I? My name is Tonia Davenport and I am the Acquisitions Editor for North Light Craft Books. I have to admit, I really love my job because not only do I get to learn so much from the books I edit, I get to meet so many talented artists in the mixed-media community and I get to play with all sort of products and projects so I can share them with the visitors of our Web site, CreateMixedMedia.com and now here, too, with the lovers at COLOURlovers.

I’m still a bit new here and learning my way around, but so far I am having a really wonderful experience getting inspiration for my creative projects from the palettes here. Last month, Miaka’s palette Curiosity Killed inspired me to make a pencil case (see above).

I discovered Laura Berger's work very much by accident. I was visiting some close friends in Seattle and I wandered into a home store that carried her prints. The print I purchased was called Be Nice to Yourself (still available on her Etsy shop). Something about the design and the little creatures she created really captivated me, and I never forgot it. In fact, I held on to her business card, which was neatly tucked into the back of the bag the print was sealed in, and when I looked her up online I discovered a whole world of work she'd created, from paintings on wood to precious little dishes. In short, I wanted to buy everything -- and that's when I knew I had an artist on my hands that the world needed to know about.

Lucky for us here at COLOURlovers, Laura had time to speak to us for an exclusive interview in which she speaks about her creation process, inspirations, dreams of one day seeing her creatures as collectible figures and more. If you're as capitivated as we were, you can keep up with Laura on her Flickr page, through her blog (listed above) or on her Etsy page.

COLOURlovers: Do you remember the first time you created art? When was it?

Laura: I distinctly remember bringing home a giant fish that I made when I was in kindergarten.  It was made out of two pieces of fish-shaped brown kraft paper that we painted fish faces onto, stapled together, and stuffed with something or other to make it three-dimensional.  I showed it to my mom and then I watched Mister Roger's Neighborhood & ate a sandwich.

To celebrate Earth Day today we have, Tiffany Threadgould of RePlayground.com and Terracycle.net, here to teach us how to re-purpose an old t-shirt to make these adorable flower pins. Tiffany just launched her first book, ReMake It! (by Sterling Publishing). It's super adorable and is a pretty fun book to have on hand whether you have kids or you just love to re-purpose. We'll be doing a giveaway for 3 of these books at the tail end of the tutorial with a BONUS PRIZE, so stay tuned!

T-Shirt Scrap Flower Pin

MATERIALS:

• T-shirt
• ruler
• washable marker or pencil
• fabric scissors
• twist tie
• button with two holes
• pin back or safety pin

Use one T-shirt to make a single color flower, or mix it up and use strips from a few different shirts for a flower with different colors.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Measure and cut ¾-inch wide strips from the bottom of a T-shirt. From those strips, cut eight 8-inch long pieces.

2. Pull on the ends of each strip and stretch them until their edges curl. Snip three holes into each strip—one in the middle and two more, each ½ inch from the ends. Be careful not to cut across the whole strip, just to make small holes.

3. Slip the ends of the twist tie through a button, and pull it through so it is snug across the front of the button. Twist the ends of the twist tie together tightly until they are completely twisted at the back of the button.

4. Thread the end of the twist tie through the hole at the center of one of the T-shirt strips. Then, thread the twist tie through the holes on the ends of the T-shirt strip. Repeat this for all the rest of the strips

5. Holding the T-shirt strips and button together, untwist the twist tie ends. Insert them through the holes in pin back or wrap them around the safety pin (whichever pin you decide to use). Adjust the twist tie until the flower and pin are held firmly in place on the pin back. Remake a whole bouquet of flower pins and grow a garden on your shirt!

More About The Author

Tiffany Threadgould is a design junkie who gives scrap materials a second life. She's the head of design atTerraCycle, a company that collects and creates products from waste. She also keeps up her own green biz,RePlayGround, where you can find ReMake It recycling kits and oodles of DIY projects. Tiffany thinks that garbage has feelings too and can sometimes be found talking to her pile of junk at her design studio in Brooklyn, N.Y.

THE GIVEAWAY!

Tiffany was so kind to send us three (3) books to give to you! We are going to do another random pick from the user comments on this one. So if you'd like a cool copy of ReMake It! You must do the following:

Leave a comment telling us what your favorite art/craft style is be that a link out to your most favorite craft blogger(s) or just list your top 1-5+ most favorite things to work with be that modge podge, sewing, quilting, re-purposing, scrapbooking (traditional or digital), card making, painting, etc. The sky is the limit in the craft world!

BONUS PRIZE!

Bonus Prize is a $25 Gift Card at COLOURlovers partner, Spoonflower.com.

I will be posting this article on the COLOURlovers Facebook wall. All you have to do is:

2. 1) LIKE the COLOURlovers Facebook Page
3. 2) SHARE the article on your facebook wall
4. 3) Leave a comment on the article I posted on our fb wall which should include your COLOURlovers USERNAME.

We will be conducting a random drawing from the facebook post commentary. As long as you followed the steps, you will be included.

If you have already LIKED our facebook page, then that step is done. You won't be able to see the SHARE or COMMENT on the COLOURlovers facebook wall until you have LIKED our page.

I've posted THIS (the above image shows what it will look like) blog article to our facebook wall. Re-Post it to your wall by clicking the link on it, SHARE (see red arrows in the image). And then make a COMMENT letting me know you shared it, and let me know your username on COLOURlovers. The facebook contest is ONLY for the $25 at Spoonflower.com. If you want the book you must ALSO comment on the blog post here.

You may play and qualify for BOTH prizes (ReMake It! book AND the $25 at Spoonflower.com). The contest will run from today, April 22nd, 2011, until Thursday, April 28th with winners announced Friday, April 29th, 2011. You must be a COLOURlovers user to qualify for either prize. So register if you need to!

The work of Daniera ter Haar & Christoph Brach, who have become better known by the name of one of their projects, Raw Color, is highly prismatic, covering the spectrum between art, design, photography and color research by mixing the powerful colors of vegetables, innovative color harvesting processes, with unique applications for print and textiles. Each project is created with an astute design sense and captured with stunningly composed photography.

The Eindhoven, Netherlands based team uses color as the 'connection between their different practices' posing questions like, 'what is the nature of a color and what is the connection to its physical state?' This post focuses on their design work. In a pervious posts we covered their research on vegetable pigments, and in an upcoming post we will cover their use of photography.

This is Basic

Planes, shadows, hues and reflections are subject of this research. For this study we have chosen for paper because this material has all appropriate qualities we were looking for. Paper is both flexible and stiff , it has colour, structure, it reflects and absorbs the light. Besides that it is one of the most natural materials for us to work with. By means of folding and cutting two-dimensional sheets are transformed in three-dimensional shapes, that form abstract images and shaded illusions.

The series of posters is part of the installation 'This is Basic'. The big pop-up shapes are triangles, circles and squares, by unfolding the poster the shapes open up and become three-dimensional. This transformation highlights the effect of shadow and reflection on the surfaces and shades.

The series is limited to 8 basic colours, both used for the shapes and the background, that makes 192 possible combinations. For those who are interested, they are for sale!

The booklets were sketches and starting point of our research at the same time. They are based on paper planes, their relation and interaction with each other. The contrasts of cut paper planes form new compositions every time you turn a page.

StrijpX

StrijpX is a design platform established in Eindhoven, showcasing emerging talent in product, fashion and graphic design. The core of this visual identity is the special developed dessin, composed of geometric shapes relating to the letter X. Every layer makes efficient use of the C,M,Y based offset printing process. During the printing the colours are turned on and off to reach a maximum diversity of transparencies, overlaps and colour combinations. The four basic combinations were created in one print run, C/M, C/Y, M/Y, C/M/Y. All on papers from 90, 120 and 250 grams. The offset printed sheets are finalised by a black information layer, adding the specific information of every exhibition. The black is added by the usage of silkscreening, hereby the C,M,Y,K is completed.

Keukenconfessies

For the food design studio 'Keukenconfessies' we searched for a mixture of moods, prints, colours and printing techniques. We were asked to design a ‘logo’ that could change, for this we came up with different, independent shapes coming from food and cooking, some more abstract then others. With these shapes you could mix endless combinations. For the business cards we added a stamp layer, to make the identity a bit more rough and playfull. The identity is based on a simple and strong shape language. For the typography is chosen a black and bold lettertype, it gives a robust feeling next to the colourful shapes. For all the printed matter we used uncoated paper. The stationary paper is only printed on the back site, here the overview from all illustrations are visible, in this case they can use the paper for different occasions.

Other Design Work

The work of Daniera ter Haar & Christoph Brach, who have become better known by the name of one of their projects, Raw Color, is highly prismatic, covering the spectrum between art, design, photography and color research by mixing the powerful colors of vegetables, innovative color harvesting processes, with unique applications for print and textiles. Each project is created with an astute design sense and captured with stunningly composed photography.

The Eindhoven, Netherlands based team uses color as the 'connection between their different practices' posing questions like, 'what is the nature of a color and what is the connection to its physical state?' This post focuses on their research on vegetable pigments. Two other posts to follow will focus on their design and photography.

“Color is a really nice connection between those disciplines. We use it almost as a material, and it’s transformative the way it can make something seem hard or light or heavy.”