If triads and that crap are the foundations of color theory, Taylor’s post is the foundation of color practice. I owe all the foundations of what’s covered here to Ian Taylor’s article Never Use Black.

In my experience, using a “split complementary palette” is about 0% predictive of me making nice-looking designs.

The fundamental skill of coloring interface designs is being able to modify one base color into many different variations.

This framework will:

Allow you to modify one theme color for basically any purpose in your UI (this is hugely powerful, and, as we’ll see, what apps like facebook are already doing)

Help you to predict what color changes will look good

Make color seem less subjective (“subjective” is often a word for “I haven’t figured out how it works” — and it’s a word you hear a ton when folks talk about color)

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/09877484-9bd3-4e4d-aacf-c409358bc01f/Untitled

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/7824c199-d698-4de2-98b9-501690ad1a91/Untitled.png

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/875dc129-4a6a-4283-969c-b015f210c1d3/Untitled

So here are our 2 trusty principles for figuring this stuff out: