How to do Themes and Color Schemes. By: Erin

Finding your theme When you are doing a website or other document, you need a consistent theme. For instance, if you want to do a fun, happy website, you probably want a summer theme, or beach. Use themes that fit the web page information. Be consistent with your theme. That includes all of your design elements, colors, images, and fonts.

Change the background color Click on Format - select background- Fill Effects. Fill Effects: Gradient, Texture, Pattern, and Picture. Gradient gives you a light to dark blend of one or two colors. Variants and Shading Styles show you various ways to align your gradient colors. If you don’t like some of the colors, click More Colors. When you use the pattern background you need to select the colors you want first. Textures have preset colors. The picture option lets you select images from files or clip art. Make sure you use personal or copyright free images or clip art graphics. Remember: Do colors that FIT YOUR THEME!

Design Elements - colors When you want color in your design, you must think first about your theme. Match colors with your theme, for example, a beach would have blue, for the ocean, tan, for the sand, yellow, for the sun, and other colors you would find on the beach. You wouldn’t want dark, blacks and blues for a beach theme. That doesn’t match the feeling that you would want to have on your design.

Logos On a website, you usually have a logo. Logos show your creativity, style, and help people associate it with your identity. Logos have your initials in it, for example, the logo at the top right corner. You want your logos’ background to match the colors and the font that corresponds to the lettering on your logo. See how the color in the background for this slide matches with the body and wings of the butterfly? This is a great example of logos, colors, and backgrounds all working together.

Fonts Fonts play a crucial role in communicating your ideas. You want your information to be easy to read, clear and precise but still appeal to the reader. “Curls MT” goes with a fun, light theme but is too hard to read for a long passage. “Papyrus” goes with a more dark theme, decorative fonts should be used in titles only. All fonts need to go with your theme and color scheme. Remember: Be consistent with your fonts. You wouldn’t want different fonts for every paragraph or page. That confuses your audience.

Different styles of colors with your theme You can use different kinds of matching, for instance, you can do red with white, or blue with yellow. Sometimes, colors that don’t match make a nice contrast for your background. It draws your audience into your presentation. This background, purple and yellow are complementary colors. On the next slide, you will see a list of colors and their complements.

Colors and their Complements Orange and Blue. Yellow and Purple. Green and Red.

Color and Size Samples for Legibility High Contrast Bold , simple and dark are easier to read for a long period of time but stark white on the computer can tire your eyes. Small, script, and decorative fonts are hard to read, especially if the colors are too close in tone Low Contrast Complementary The combination of bold simplistic but stylish fonts with complementary colors help the reader, and create a harmony that is appealing.

By: Erin Summing it all up… Now that you know how to contrast, match, change your background color, and pick fonts, you know how to do: “Themes and Color Schemes!” Thanks for looking at this presentation! Hope it helped!!    By: Erin