WEDDING COLOR PREDICTION 2010
There is no question in our minds (nearlyweds) that Alice in Wonderland will be the visual queue for wedding colors in 2010. Say good-bye to robin’s egg blue and chocolate and hello to colors like this. We love it!
Nearlyweds sells the most gorgeous, fun to use wedding websites.
What we love so much about Nearlyweds is how great all the designs are. They have partnered with wedding stationery designers to produce all the templates. There are over a hundred designs to choose from, and about anything you might be interested in: from modern and traditional to vintage, retro, steampunk, and goth. All designs have matching stationery that you can buy from the design partner.
They have just the right feature set like unlimited photo uploads, online RSVP, unlimited pages, embedable html (for youtube videos or google maps or slideshows), blogs, and pushpin maps and best of all, drag n drop easy to use editing.
Color Slide acts like a viewer to Adobe Kuler (where a very talented group of designers six color palettes). The app is simple, allowing you to view top rated, most viewed, most recent, or even search. On top of this, it allows for bookmarking or direct emailing (my favorite) of palettes you really like.
Clicking the info link on a palette shows the HEX codes for the colors, the title and author/designer info.
How can you complain about a free app that feeds Kuler palettes directly to your phone? The colors don’t have the same neon glow issue most iPhone color apps have, you can easily bookmark favorites, and you have almost the same functionality that the Kuler site provides. Sure, you could request 100 more features to be added, but Kuler doesn’t provide these, so the app shouldn’t be held at fault. It’s 5 stars. Download it.
Now if only ColourLovers.com would make an app…
Color Wheel - while the designer wasn’t especially creative with the app name, the app itself is. Color freaks know the standard toolbox for selecting color and complimentary color. And color includes them all! They include:
- neutral
- analogous
- clash
- complementary
- complementary splits (Color wheel includes 3)
- triadic
- tetradic
- four tone, five tone, six tone
On top of this, Color Wheel will show you the HEX code, RGB value, or CMYK value for your color and the complimentary color and let you know if they are web safe.
Now for the critical part of the review: as mentioned in the review for Ben Color iPhone app, due to the limiting nature of the iPhone, it’s tough to bridge the gap into be truly useful. The color wheel has millions of colors, yet relies on the very imprecise movement of your finger across the screen - so getting a precise color is difficult. The screen is rather neon looking, all the time, so you end up feeling like the colors you are choosing are a bit overwhelming. The program is useful for web design and digital design, probably not that useful for other color selecting challenges.
Over-all: Color Wheel value far exceeds the $.99 price tag. This is a great app.
Many big companies have out of touch executives that I can hear barking at the tech people in the conference room to “make us an iPhone app - I hear those are big!” There is ample evidence in the iPhone store too.
Fortunately, Ben Color - the iPhone App by Benjamin Moore Paints is actually fairly interesting, somewhat useful, and has the feature set I would build if Ben Moore hired me to build the app.
Here is what you can do:
It’s free - which is the right price. It is fun to play with, and I think the most intriguing feature is probably the ability to find color chips based on a photo, then save those chips. If you are a color lover or someone who just really enjoys design and style, this app will be fun. It will help you remember great colors you see while you are out and on the go.
As far as actually helping you choose a paint color - this app isn’t really that helpful. Between poor photo quality from the low res camera to the very imprecise finger swiping to find the right color (either within a photo or on the color wheel) - this app is only going to get you part of the way there. But I’m not really sure any app could be perfect in this regard - that is a limitation of the device as much as the app itself.
Weddingcolors.org is just months away from releasing an online wedding color selector that will knock your garder off.
In the interim we are bringing you Useful things:
1) Latest Wedding Color Trends from around the country
2) Information on how to select colors that work together
Enjoy!
