I don't know if some of you are good with fonts, but I'll ask anyway.
I want to become a web designer, so my own site has to be good.
Unfortunatly, I am a complete noob when it comes to colors and fonts.
So I was wondering if you could give me some suggestions.

I want my site to express/be associated with the folowing:
creativity
originality
flexibility
intellect/intelligence

But I don't know which colors and/or fonts express those things.
After some research I found that green or yellow are associated with intellect/intelligence, but I couldn't find colors for the others.
I could use black for elegance, but I don't want my site to be dark.

And the font has to express professionality, seriousness, not childish.


Any suggestions on colors and/or fonts?

It sounds like blasphemy to say this (especially here) but I think colour is not as important as how it's used, and the layout and organisation of a webpage.

Personally, I think creativity and originality are evoked by any offbeat colours that aren't just plain blue, red, or bright orange. If I saw a website with the below colour as a background (because the contrast is too low to be suitable as much else) I'd probably associate it with being fresh and unusual, because it's an unusual colour.


However, for both of those above you could probably convey the same feelings through an especially nice header image for your website or a cool navigation menu design. And for flexibility and intelligence, I'm not really sure that there's any specific colour associated with them.

So I'd just say to choose a colour scheme you like, without worrying too much what a certain colour says.

As far as fonts go, you're pretty limited as regards body copy. Jon Tan's web fonts test suite shows how different web fonts look. There are a few nonconventional ones listed there, like Lucida Sans, which most computers will be able to display but usually aren't listed as web-safe fonts. (And here's a list of some more fonts that are safe to use.)

If you want to see how fonts are used elegantly and professionally, I suggest Jon Tan's site, because it really is awesome, or a blog post series titled 'Behind the Scenes of Exquisite Web Typography'.

If you're talking about a font to use in a header image or something, there's so many out there I can't really advise on one. Anything that looks easily readable and not too 'frilly' should be fine.

I have to ask, though, which is more important: creativity or professionality? Because creative websites don't always look the most professional and serious. Web Designer Wall is pretty creative, but I'm not sure that it looks 'serious' at all. Lots of really creative design sites only look professional to design geeks, who can appreciate how much work it takes to achieve a certain look. (Not to malign design geeks, because I hold them in the highest esteem, of course.)

I hope I helped a bit. ^^ I'm pretty interested in webdesign, so I have quite a few more links I could dig up if you needed it...

About the fonts. I meant the font I would use in my logo, because that's an image so I can use any font there. For the main font I'll use verdana, because that's very legible.

About creativity, I see what you mean. In that case I'll have to think about it. :P

I'd like more of those links if you could find any. :P

Well, there's a lot of fonts you could use, so I'm not sure how helpful I can be. But I suppose I can give you a list of some nice free fonts and you can see what you like?

There's a FAQ & list of free fonts on Typophile (and a list of lists of free fonts too =P). Smashing Mag has a list of free fonts for professional design, which might be most useful for you. And some really nice ones at exljbris; these are used a lot, though, I've noticed.

(I actually spend hours trying to organise my bookmarks, so I'm really glad FF3 makes it easier. I just have to type in part of the URL or title in the address bar, instead of searching through folders and subfolders and sub-subfolders. -.-)

COLOUR help and other stuff:
http://www.davidairey.com/colour-tools-palettes-theory/ (note that CL is on top ^^)
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/11/21/designing-a-rainbow-sexy-hot-colors/
http://www.crestock.com/blog/design/the-50-most-popular-web-design-blog-posts-resources-cheat-sheets-of-2007-114.aspx

General useful stuff:
http://www.forwebdesigners.com/
http://www.artypapers.com/csshelppile/scribble.php
http://veerle.duoh.com/blog/links/
http://www.alvit.de/handbook/

Design resources:
http://www.bluevertigo.com.ar/bluevertigo.htm
http://www.freeres.info/
(& Photoshoppy stuff:)
http://www.fuelyourcreativity.com/the-ultimate-photoshop-resource-list-part-3-actions/ (part three of a series)
http://www.marcofolio.net/photoshop/ultimate_photoshop_design_resources.html
http://www.marcofolio.net/photoshop/ultimate_photoshop_design_resources.html

What is a crushed color scheme? I saw this mentioned on the advice area of a mock interview with a fellow graduating student and cant find info on google about it.

dafont.com is my favorite place to go for browsing free fonts.

If you're going into web design, your website is a reflection of you so you need to use your creativity, originality, flexibility, intellect/intelligence to design it.

That's true, but a little help is never bad. :P

I will just make a quick comment. We learn letter and other forms as much by the space provided around them as we do my the shapes themselves. Beware both san serif faces and thinking to much about serif. Go classic with headlines as swirly and frilly as you want.

By the way. Sometimes you need to tighten up type so it doesn't look horrid. WordPerfect is perhaps the best general purpose software out there for shaping fonts into place. Of course, unless you work for a lawyer, you don't need it much.

Open Office is FREE!!!! www.openoffice.org

Open Office and WordPerfect won't help you at all with websites.

My advice is not to be afraid of a few torrent downloads while you're starting out. You need to get familiar with the pro tools, and there are very few people with a couple grand to drop on CS3. Just get your hands dirty, build build build, and when there's something ready to show, this forum will be much more useful for color and design advice.

Good luck!

Hey, I wanna download the Anivers font, but then I have to register on myfonts.com and I don't want to. Can someone just upload the file and give me a link? (A)

Evert wrote:

Hey, I wanna download the Anivers font, but then I have to register on myfonts.com and I don't want to. Can someone just upload the file and give me a link? (A)

Here is the link http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/anivers.html. It's bit slow so be patient.

Also download the other fonts as well they are excllent set of fonts.

Evert, I just realised that the link I gave for downloading the Aniver font will take you back to MyFonts to register even though this was not required in 2007. There must be some kind of contractual agreement with the typographer requiring registration. Is there a way to send your email address via colourlovers to me , then I will forward a copy to you? Regards Moltoallegro

Ok, I've sent you a love note. ;)

Oh, hey, but in the future, you can check Bug Me Not, which is what I use. ^^ It has logins for practically all known websites, which is pretty useful.