pais·ley: noun  A distinctive intricate pattern of curved, feather-shaped figures based on a pine-cone design from India. For COLOURlovers, the Paisley is a lovely lace-like motif that can be produced in any measure of design and color scheme. Like fingerprints, not one is the same.

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When I look at the Paisley, I see amoebas, tadpoles and teardrops combined with floral genius.

How often do you see a Paisley? I think it's something we see so often, might pass it by in our every day lives. The history of the Paisley I found quite interesting! Where it came from, what the word Paisley  actually means, or why they call it a Paisley at all...

OMG RGB/CMYK NYC! We're very excited to be partnering with Print, Pantone & the Art Directors Club on the brand new Color Conference, Oct. 4-6 in NYC. Yours truly will be co-emceeing the conference with Jude Stewart.

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About the Color Conference

The rules for color aren't black and white. We each experience the world uniquely and that creates an awesome opportunity for each of us to share our own perspective with others. We're really excited about being together with so many creative folks to share the color love. This event isn't just hearing about the color work of top industry professionals... but also interacting with color, networking with other colorful folks and sharing your ideas about color in workshops and panels.

NEW YORK – August 22, 2011 – Print Magazine today announced the first-ever Print Color Conference, taking place October 4-6, in New York City. Presented in partnership with Pantone and COLOURlovers, and hosted by The Art Directors Club, the event is an exploration of color by leaders in the graphic design, art, fashion, lighting, and interior design industries. The focus of Print’s Color Conference is to illuminate and elevate the discussion of color; its usefulness and impact on society, its importance as a communication tool; and its impact on the worlds of art, design, politics, branding, and everyday lives. Full program details – including speakers, interactive demos, and networking opportunities – and conference registration is available now at printcolorconference.com.

Peppered throughout the event will be interactive demonstrations in which attendees have the opportunity to experiment with color, thanks to our sponsor, 3rd Ward. Recognized as an incubator for innovation and possibility, 3rd Ward members enjoy a supportive community and top-of-the-line creative resources, including photo studios, media lab, jewelry studio, wood & metal shops, and a huge education program.

Use the COLOURlovers Promo Code "LOVE" for $75 OFF
www.printcolorconference.com

Speakers include...
Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute.
Gael Towey, Chief Creative and Editorial Director at Martha Stewart.
Darius Monsef, Founder & CEO of COLOURlovers (That's me! :) )
Jude Stewart, Print Contributing Editor
...And More! full speaker list here.

Real Life Color Palettes!

The whole COLOURlovers team will be in the house mingling with fellow lovers of color and running a "Making Color Palettes in Real Life" interactive project where you'll be able to make and share physical big palettes. (We've done this before at our previous launch events... and in NYC we'll have even more colors to choose from!)

Colorful Conversations... A Panel You Can Help Lead!

I'll be helping to moderate some panels with the world's most talented color professionals... What do you think should be part of our colorful conversation? What questions do you think I should ask them? What's the most exciting, frustrating thing about color for you? ...? I'll give you a shout-out when I ask any questions you suggest.

We look forward to coloring with you in NYC! And don't forget to use the COLOURlovers Promo Code "LOVE" for $75 OFF!
www.printcolorconference.com

Fashion is always one season ahead, but now that Fall is really on its way, the things you've worn all Summer are starting to give way to the pressure of changing winds - literally!

Thankfully, one of the most noticeable Fall trends is suitable for sunny days and colder weather, too. A spectrum of yellows, oranges and tomatoey reds have been parading across the globe, whether by runway or street-style. But perhaps even more fun than the warm colors themselves are the variations on how to wear these statement pieces. Traversing casual to formal, these warm hued clothes have had their versatility proven. So would you dare to put on any of these pairs or are regular blue jeans more your speed?

1. Sabrina Meijer of AfterDRK 2. J. Crew bistro pants 3. Silvia Navarro on Chicisimo 4. Zara Man Fall 2011 5. Yigal Azrouël Fall 2011

Broken down by style: Amsterdam's Sabrina Meijer and Yigal Azrouël's Fall runway both channel chic European simplicity, but the outfits definitely don't lack impact: neutrals and black create a high-contrast, color-blocking effect when combined with saturated orange and amber trousers.

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Meanwhile, not everyone is content keeping it simple. Silvia Navarro uses a complementary color palette, mixing preppy blue hues with heavily saturated orange for a layered outfit that's anything but conventional. Fashion brand Zara styles a similarly layered look, but with subdued earth tones and cool neutrals to create a subtle complementary color combination.

As the Summer (for most of us) comes to a close and we seep in to Fall, we take a look back at the Mercedes Miami Swim Fashion Week back in July. Noticeable neon Indian inspired Tribal Trends are seeping in to the 2012 RTW ("Ready To Wear") collections.

"From Fierce animal prints to safari suiting, spring is swinging to a tribal beat..." - Vogue.com

 

COLOURlovers themselves seem to be trending amongst pattern and palette designs. Take a look for yourself...

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Mara Hoffman

Mara Hoffman collaged complex patterns and playful color combinations, using cooler hues like ostrich feather green and sky blue as a base to feature rays of fluorescent warmer oranges, yellows, and pinks. Showing a flair for Egyptian patterns and colors, Hoffman cites her husband Javier Piñón’s last collection O Babalon as an influence for her tribal trend.

Dinelia Brazil & Luli Fama

Dinelia Brazil and Luli Fama chanelled their respective Brazilian and Cuban heritages, using similar heavily saturated palettes to create a modern spin on tribal lineated patterns.

Red Carter

Heavily saturated eye-popping brights are set to bleed into the next season, after being mastered this spring by fashion veterans from Haider Ackermann to Jill Sander, and Rachel Roy.  Red Carter used blocks of electric blue, lime green and flaming coral to create strong futuristic swimwear bound to turn heads.

Aqua Di Lara

On the other end of the color saturation spectrum, soft watercolors and bleeding patterns created a rainbow connection. Aqua Di Lara stayed true to its feminine style by evoking galaxy gazing, with midnight blues as a backdrop for whirls of soft pinks, mellow yellows and dewy greens.

Softer pastel prints were also channeled by White Sands Australia in Australian bushland inspired colors of soft olive, sweet peach and pale wattle yellow.  L*Space, Caffe Swimwear and A.Che also proved that pretty pops of posies on a light canvas are eternally classic.

Regardless of your penchant for neon or pastels, next Summer is set to sizzle with these colorful new trends.

All photos courtesy of Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Swim

A few months ago, we released ColorSchemer Touch, the official COLOURlovers iPhone app, on the Apple App Store. We spent a lot of time making it super-simple to create palettes, sync creations with your COLOURlovers account, and take the incredible COLOURlovers community with you wherever you go. And thousands of downloads later, we've been blown away by the positive response we've received from everyone who's used it so far.

But that's still not enough! We want everyone - even people that have never visited COLOURlovers before - to see how easy it is to share their colorful ideas and inspirations from a coffee shop, a car, or even a hiking trail in the middle of nature.

That's why starting today, the ColorSchemer iPhone app is now FREE in the App Store!

So what are you waiting for? Download it today to see why thousands of other COLOURlovers think it's the best way to browse, comment, Love, Fave and interact with the COLOURlovers community at home and on the go.

(And we haven't forgot about you Android users. We're talking with and looking for a great developer to port the app over. If you know somebody we should be talking to, let us know.)

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Getting Started: Create a Palette in a Snap!

One of my favorite features is the PhotoSchemer tool within the ColorSchemer App. Take a picture (or use one from your image library) and start picking colors for a palette. Super fast!

Betabrand, an online-only clothing company that produces limited-edition batches of clothing and accessories, recently paired up with COLOURlovers in the contest, Color-A-Plaid Shirt Contest by Betabrand + COLOURlovers. The contest turned out to be a huge success with over 5,000 entries!

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To enter the contest, COLOURlovers simply had to color a pre-picked plaid pattern - Betabrand2, which had been created by one of our very own Lovers, sec9586. After coloring the pattern it produced a plaid shirt mockup of the finished product.

VOTE HERE AT BETABRAND

The contest is closed and nine finalists were chosen by the Betabrand design team. Voting on these nine selections will be open until NOON (12pm PST) Monday, August 22, 2011.

The Finalists

Betabrand chose the finalists not by the amount of LOVES each pattern/palette got. Simply because this would have been unfair. COLOURlovers had added the ability to LOVE the designs and share them for the fun of the contest.

"Our design team narrowed it down to 9 finalists not based on the number of loves on Colourlovers - because patterns that were created at the beginning of the contest would have an unfair advantage to those created toward the end. As for not picking a winner, but rather narrowing it down to 9, we decided to do that because we were so thrilled with the volume and quality of submissions that we wanted to keep the love going!" - Jared @ Betabrand

The nine finalists in no particular order...

Hipster Plaid by bcrider

cloud nine by martino

*colour hunter* by Sunny21327

Have you ever wanted to apply your color design abilities to a real-life product? Well here's your big opportunity! Rev up your color coordination skills and become the next palette designer for a plaid shirt offered through Betabrand! You'll get the unique opportunity to color a plaid pattern, see the design in action (applied to a template shirt) and the possibility of having your colors picked for print. How cool is that?!

Betabrand is an online-only clothing company based in San Francisco that produces unique designs in limited-edition batches every week. They make Cordarounds, Japants, DARPA hoodies, Farmer's Market backpacks, disco pants, and much, much more.

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Ready, Set, Contest Time!

We've had our very own, sec9586 create a pattern template for a new plaid flannel shirt that Betabrand plans to release in two versions for the 2011 holiday season. Betabrand has already chosen the colors for one version - the other is up to you!

How it works...

Easy, color the Betabrand plaid pattern template, Betabrand2.

Your colored pattern will automatically appear with the rest of the entries on the contest gallery page. You may color as many versions of the pattern template as you like.

If your colors are chosen...

The Betabrand design team will select one winner, who'll receive the following:

• - A real-life finished plaid flannel shirt;
• - Your COLOURlovers user name on the shirt label (for this 2011 production run - see above image);
• - $100 Betabrand Gift Card;
• - Recognition on the Betabrand web site and in all company communications; this includes photo of the winner in his/her winning shirt (optional).

The contest runs August 2nd - 11th (2011). Anyone who submits an entry will receive a coupon code for 20% OFF any Betabrand product - offer only valid during the contest timeline.

View the Contest Gallery

Color this plaid pattern template to enter (Betabrand2)

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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Having a look over some of May's top colors to see if any recent website designs are using any of these color. It just so happens that I found many recent additions to designcreme that do.

If you're currently working on a color scheme for a website or business identity and are looking for colors to use you can keep up with the color trends by looking here on COLOURlovers and keeping up with websites featured on sites like designcreme, there are many others such sites.

Most Love Colors May 2011

Recent Web Color Trends

zag.gy

matchstic.com

samtschick.com


foodzy.com

remedyquarterly.com

heathwaller.com

foma.am

justburns.com

qlpros.com

strangenative.com

golivebutton.com

dennys.com

bernatfortet.com

kcredemption.org

agcchicago.org/netpositive

goodfootapp.com

christianrodeo.it

fullstopinteractive.com

sxsw.squarespace.com

sasquatchfestival.com

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Since society seems to be moving at an ever-increasing speed towards going all digital, the thumb drive is like the file folder of the past, except more compact and much more stylish. Retailers have cashed in on the market for people's desire to have cool gadgets in their pockets, and you can find all manner of interesting flash device out there.

However, when you combine storage space with something like an MP3 player, ask your favorite designers to come in and finish it off with a great look, you may just find you have a product on your hands that really catches people's attention. Such is the case with Mugo, a line created by Aaron Atchison that features big name artists such as Julie West, Shin Tanaka, Jon Burgerman and more.