Name Plate - Color Scheme

A color scheme is a very important aesthetic component, but many people find it difficult to know where to begin settling upon a set of hues. I happen to be very lazy and I often find it difficult to be creative, so I like to find easy answers to coming up with ideas.

For color schemes, I like to look at preexisting things in order to draw inspiration from such as sunsets, insects, weird-ass sea creatures, and bricks.

After choosing an example to start with, I will use eyedropper tools to select color samples from the image. I will often choose at least three hues to begin with. If I choose two hues that are similar, I often like to select a contrasting third hue. Then, for each of the three hues, I will create dark, medium, and light value swatches.

If you were to draw inspiration for a color scheme, where would you draw from?

For this blog post, I am asking my students to create name plate for themselves using their colors from the color scheme they created. Students will also use two fonts: one for their name, one for a headline, where the headline would be something they might use for a LinkedIn headline.

I am attaching a screenshot of my InDesign document that I used to take an image of bricks to inspire the colors for a nameplate below. )My students, however, will attach their inspiration photo and each nameplate as a separate jpg.)