Comments on: Sea Unfathomably

By: Google: True Colors Shine Through « The Product Guy

Google: True Colors Shine Through « The Product Guy — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:11:22 +0000

[...] well as bad, real-world examples of use of Color and Contrast in online products and websites … Poor Color Scheme Fair Color Scheme (Cluttered) Fair Color Scheme (Mismatched Color) Good Color Scheme (First [...]

By: On the Color of Quick-UX « The Product Guy

On the Color of Quick-UX « The Product Guy — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:44:39 +0000

By: Higgledy Haven « The Product Guy

Higgledy Haven « The Product Guy — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:17:01 +0000

[...] Sea Unfathomably [...]

By: Dave R

Dave R — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:50:23 +0000

It is not just the color, as mentioned above, but the poor use (or not used depending on your perspective) of white-space. As a user I am constantly moving around the screen and the use of the busy background is not useful. Imagine the site on a wide screen monitor.

By: A Dentist of a Different Color « The Product Guy

A Dentist of a Different Color « The Product Guy — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:30:16 +0000

[...] Sea Unfathomably [...]

By: Susan

Susan — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:18:34 +0000

To continue, website usability research shows that users first focus on images of people, then on saturated colours. So when saturated colours are used over a large area people don’t know where to look on the page – this isn’t good. This is not my opinion, but the results of a ton of practical research that has been done on usability.

Just because other sites have used this colour scheme and people are able to use those sites, no matter how painful it is, doesn’t make the use of colour on this website OK. It isn’t.

By: Susan

Susan — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:09:42 +0000

Yes, exactly Tom. The colour choice of red text on blue background is bad. Don’t do it. Highly saturated colours are also fine used in moderation for emphasis to draw the eye. When they are used over a large area, people don’t know where to look. All in all, this site is full of bad colour choices.

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:22:58 +0000

I agree with Krish, the resulting design problems are not inherent to the color selection, but instead are due to the application of the colors. Certainly, chromostereopsis is an issue on the depicted page, but this phenomenon can simply be negated by removing the red text from the dominant blue field – and say by placing the text over a white field, as done with “The Product Guy” blog (Drupal’s Garland theme). Similar color schemes to Midwest SCUBA have been used successfully on other sites. In this case, it’s not just about the colors you choose, it’s how you use them.

By: Susan

Susan — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:49:15 +0000

This IS an example of poor color choice. It has to do with how the eye perceives colour. Colours from the opposite ends of the colour spectrum should not be put together. The eye gets confused trying to focus between the long focal length of the red and the short focal length of the blue. This results in blurry text that is hard to read and causes acutal physical stress in your users which is something designers should try to avoid.

By: Krish Mandal

Krish Mandal — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:07:07 +0000

This is not a problem of color scheme, though it may be argued that it is not the best scheme they could have come up with. No, it’s simply a problem of bad design. You don’t put a busy and highly-annoyingly-patterned dark background on a page you want people to read. Regardless of the effective color of that background, it will make the site hard to read. Do I want to read the site in red text? Not really, but I CAN read it if the pattern didn’t make me sea sick.