Colour palettes are sort of a pet-peeve for me. They are at the basis of so many art and design projects and represent – in a few blocks of colours – the essence of an inspiration. I especially love fabric swatches with multiple patterns and hues. I guess it’s because it adds a textural element to the colours. Uniqlo in New York city has massive, high walls covered in clothes that are sorted by hues. It transforms the shop into a giant textural colour palette, which was pretty mesmerizing to me!
Photo taken by Alisdair, Flickr Creative Commons
I wanted to say something about one of my favourite website. ColourLovers is just what it says it is – a community gathered around their love for colours. It is a great place to browse and share colour and pattern palettes with other afficionados. There are also fantastic generator tools to build and manage your own palettes, which you can share with other members of the community.
Any good design project should start with a strong inspiration. Go and browse Flickr for inspiring pictures, or even better, go OUTSIDE (oui oui!) for a little photo session. Bring back found objects, memories and snapshots and get working on that palette. Having inspirational material makes this a much more constructive effort since you have a direction to start with.