As spring brings with it new light and colours to feast our eyes on, I thought it would be interesting to see what a search about colours for the web would generate. We all know colours can influence us - including our moods. We have all been to websites that either drew us in or repelled us - possibly due to the colours used. With the ever- increasing number of people designing their own sites, creating their own blogs, and the accessibility to design tools, a look at some basic guidelines may be helpful.

Obviously, if you are presenting information online and want people to feel good about it, you don't want to leave a bad taste in their mouth with unsavoury colour combinations. The industry recommends contrasting background and text for easier readability. Black text on white or light background is an obvious - and recommended - choice. But, as YuGu blogger, hyugushare.blogspot.com/2007/09/choosing-right-colors-for-your-web-site.html, says, "there are other excellent combinations also. Besides white, other effective web site background colors are dark blue, gray and black." They go on to recommend colours not to combine as they are noted for causing eye exhaustion.

Dan's WebTips, webtips.dan.info/colors.html, recommends avoiding black backgrounds, quite popular for games and music-related sites. If you are on a site with a dark background, and you want to print out a readable page - reset your browser. (See tips below).

Plain language advocates keeping things simple in order to improve the quality and effectiveness of the communications process. Cheryl Stephens, who loves purple (more on that later), at www.plainlanguage.com, talks about design and colours from a plain language perspective. She recommends "only use bright colors in headlines or graphics."

And talking about keeping it simple, how about a blog about blue'? Simply inspired by the word and how we use it, blogger Sheelagh Caygill has started colour-blue.blogspot.com/. Her entries touch on the role the word blue' has in music and sport. Interesting idea.

When I searched for I love Purple, actually looking for a food products company, I found MySpace's purple template, a video and more. Just put in any colour and blogs galore will appear. One company dubbed Valentine's week Purple Love Week'. This year's theme was Seven Days of Loving Great Foods'. They've taken a warm, happy colour and applied it in obvious and subtle ways on their website. Very creative - and pleasing. You might be inspired to start your own blog or social networking site on a colour theme.

Web Design Colour Tips...

The general design wisdom recommends avoiding pairing blue and red, or blue and yellow. Green text on red background or red text on green / blue background are also choices that you shouldn't make because such combinations usually cause eye fatigue.

"If you're trying to print a black-background site yourself, try setting the browser configuration to ignore document colors' and use the browser defaults; this may produce a printable document."

webtips.dan.info/colors.html New: The Talking Newspapers have made the leap from providing their visually-impaired clients with news on cassette tapes to memory sticks. This great new service also allows us to get a digital copy of their news podcast to provide via our site.

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thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/news Vote: Don't forget to vote for your favourite entry in the Anne Pierson Award for Young Writers in Cumbria 2008 competition.

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