Exercises in Color for Designers
Seeking inspiration for your floral work? One of the best things you can do to freshen your perspective is to place yourself under restrictions.
Restrictions force creativity. That might seem counter to everything you’d think about creativity, but a set of rules makes us think differently about the resources we have on hand. But your outcome is dependent on your comittment to the rules. So- let’s consider some rules related to color and see what happens.
Try the color palette randomizer at Perchance . Work with whatever comes up to the best of your ability. Collect plants and foliage from your garden/farm that fall into the surprise palette, only.
Don’t have each of the 5 colors that come up? Work with only those that you do have, however many you can find, and see what kind of design, market bouquet, or flat lay you can make. Even if you only have one color— forcing yourself to work in a monochromatic way with a single color or even a single ingredient can be revealing. Enjoy the process.
Perchance color palette randomizer.
For an added challenge (or direction) try applying the colors in terms of the Fibonacci Sequence/Golden Ratio: 2, 3, 5, 8, 13.
Fibonnaci Sequence / Golden Ratio
2. Use the Adobe Color to extract a color theme from a painting that you admire.
Adobe Color palette generator
Need help finding a random piece of art to inform your palette? Try Randomize.com/random-art-gallery . It will give you a random piece of art. Copy the image to your computer and upload it to Adobe Color.
3. Randomly choose a Palette Perfect page and point without looking. See if you can re-create the palette you land on in the same proportions from things you scout in your garden. Don’t cheat and turn to a different page, no matter how uncomfortable you feel about your choice or how weird it seems. The more strange the “problem” the more interesting your “solution” will be!
