What Colors Mean

Colors evoke emotion. Colors have meanings that vary between cultures and even personal preference.

Of course, the shade of a color can change the meaning, too. For example, yellow might be cheerful, but a darker yellow might be considered dingy. An olive green can feel earthy, while a forest green can symbolize affluence.

Color symbolism is the use of color to represent traditional, cultural, or religious ideas, concepts, or feelings or to evoke physical reactions.

What do individual colors mean in detail:

	Beige
	Black
	Blue	(plus azure | beryl | cerulean | cobalt | corporate blue | indigo | navy | sapphire)
	Brown
	Gold
	Gray
	Green	(plus chartreuse)
	Ivory
	Lavender
	Orange
	Pink	(plus fuchsia)
	Purple	(plus lilac | plum | violet)
	Red	(plus blood red | crimson | scarlet | vermilion)
	Silver
	Turquoise
	White
	Yellow

Please note that while color symbolism applies to colors wherever they are used, this series of articles on color meanings focuses primarily on the use of color in print and Web projects for desktop publishing and graphic design. While some scientific studies are noted, there are no absolutes. Color preferences and meanings are personal and subjective and no one size or situation fits all.

However, speaking in generalities,following Table gives you a sense of what some basic colors typically mean :

Color	Various Meanings
Red	Passion, love, energy, danger, strength, importance, excitement, desire, speed, power, heat, aggression, fire, blood, war, violence, all things intense and passionate.
Pink	Symbolizes love and romance, caring, tenderness, acceptance and calm.
Beige and ivory	Symbolize unification. Ivory symbolizes quiet and pleasantness. Beige symbolizes calm and simplicity.
Turquoise	Symbolizes calm. Teal symbolizes sophistication. Aquamarine symbolizes water. Lighter turquoise has a feminine appeal.
Orange	Heat, endurance, vitality, health, inviting, energy, balance, enthusiasm, warmth, vibrant, expansive, flamboyant, demanding of attention.
Yellow	Courage, energizing, pleasant, cheerful, joy, happiness, betrayal, optimism, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, gold, philosophy, dishonesty, cowardice, jealousy, covetousness, deceit, illness, hazard and friendship.
Green	Safety, wealth, freshness, calming, nature, environment, healthy, good luck, renewal, youth, spring, generosity, fertility, jealousy, inexperience, envy, misfortune, vigor.
Purple	Royalty, nobility, spirituality, ceremony, mysterious, transformation, wisdom, enlightenment, cruelty, honor, arrogance, mourning.
Blue	Loyalty, tranquility, responsibility, peace, tranquility, cold, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty, sky, water, technology, depression, appetite suppressant.
Lavender	Symbolizes femininity, grace and elegance.
Black	Elegance, power, death, grief, authority, sexuality, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, mystery, fear, evil, unhappiness, depth, style, sadness, remorse, anger, anonymity, underground, good technical color, mourning.
Brown	Earthliness, warm, dependability, wistful, woodsy, stability, hearth, home, outdoors, reliability, comfort, endurance, simplicity, and comfort.
White	Reverence, purity, birth, simplicity, cleanliness, peace, humility, precision, innocence, youth, winter, snow, good, sterility, marriage (Western cultures), death (Eastern cultures), cold, clinical.
Gray	Security, reliability, intelligence, staid, modesty, dignity, maturity, solid, conservative, practical, old age, sadness, boring. Silver symbolizes calm.

Physical and Cultural reactions to colors

Sometimes colors create a physical reaction (red has been shown to raise blood pressure) and at other times it is a cultural reaction (in the U.S. white is for weddings, in some Eastern cultures, white is the color for mourning and funerals).

[su_spoiler title="Relation with Colors" icon="plus-circle" style="fancy"]

• Temperature
  
  
  
  • The more towards the red end of spectrum you go, the hotter it gets.
  
  
  • The more towards the blue/purple end of the spectrum you go, the colder it gets.
  
  
  
  


• Weight:
  
  
  
  • Darker and more intense colors seem heavier.
  
  
  • Lighter colors seem, unsurprisingly, lighter.
  
  
  
  


• Money:
  
  
  
  • Darker colors, such as burgundy red, tend to show opulence (they are often called ‘rich’ colors).
  
  
  • Dull shades, such as gray and dark browns indicate poverty.
  
  
  
  


• Seasons:
  
  
  
  • Pastel and light shades are delicate, feminine, springtime.
  
  
  • Bright shades of primary colors indicate summer.
  
  
  • Earthy shades of brown, yellow and orange speak of nature and the fall.
  
  
  • Cool shades of white, black and blue represent winter.
  
  
  
  

[/su_spoiler]

Uses in retail business

Here are some ways in which colors are used in retail and business:

• Red: Creates urgency - often used in sales and impulse sales


• Green: Easy, calm - used to relax people


• Blue: Creates trust - used by financial institutions such as banks


• Navy blue: Cheaper - selling to price-sensitive


• Royal blue: Urgency - selling to impulse buyer


• Pink: Romantic - selling to women and girls


• Yellow: Grabbing attention - used in displays and windows


• Orange: Energizing - used to push for action, as in impulse buying


• Purple: Calm - used in anti-aging products


• Black: Power - selling luxury, aggressive products, or to impulse buyers

Color can even change what you taste. Customers who bought 7-Up cans that had their color changed to yellow reported that the drink tasted more lemony.

"An executive for a paint company received complaints from workers in a blue office that the office was too cold. When the offices were painted a warm peach, the sweaters came off even though the temperature had not changed."

Choosing colors based on symbolism can apply to everything from clothing to wall paint to home furnishings.

Colors Around the World

Go on and see what colors mean around the world :

[su_spoiler title="Red" style="fancy"]

• For the ancient Romans, a red flag was a signal for battle


• Because of its visibility, stop signs, stoplights, brake lights, and fire equipment are all painted red.


• The ancient Egyptians considered themselves a red race and painted their bodies with red dye for emphasis.


• In Russia, red means beautiful. The Bolsheviks used a red flag as their symbol when they overthrew the tsar in 1917. That is how red became the color of communism.


• In India, red is the symbol for a bride.


• In South Africa, red is the color of mourning.


• It’s considered good luck to tie a red bow on a new car.


• In China, red is the color of good luck and is used as a holiday and wedding color. Chinese babies are given their names at a red-egg ceremony.


• Superstitious people think red frightens the devil.


• A “red-letter day” is one of special importance and good fortune


• In Greece, eggs are dyed red for good luck at Easter time


• Red is the color most commonly found in national flags.


• The “Redshirts” were the soldiers of the Italian leader Garibaldi, who unified modern Italy in the nineteenth century.


• To “see red” is to be angry.


• A “red herring” is a distraction, something that takes attention away from the real issue.


• A “red eye” is an overnight airplane flight.


• If a business is “in the red,” it is losing money.

[/su_spoiler]

[su_spoiler title="Green" style="fancy"]

• Only one national flag is a solid color: the green flag of Libya.


• Ancient Egyptians colored the floors of their temples green.


• In ancient Greece, green symbolized victory.


• In the highlands of Scotland, people wore green as a mark of honor.


• Green is the national color of Ireland.


• A “greenback” is slang for a U.S. dollar bill.


• Green means “go.” When “all systems are green,” it means everything is in order.


• The green room of a concert hall or theater is where performers relax before going onstage.


• The “green-eyed monster” is jealousy.


• A greenhorn is a newcomer or unsophisticated person


• Green is youthful.


• Being “green around the gills” is looking pale and sickly.


• “Green with envy” means full of envy or jealousy.


• A person with a “green thumb” is good at making plants grow.


• A green, or common, is a town park.


• Green is a healing color, the color of nature.

[/su_spoiler]

[su_spoiler title="Blue" style="fancy"]

• In ancient Rome, public servants wore blue. Today, police and other public servants wear blue.


• In Iran, blue is the color of mourning.


• Blue was used as protection against witches, who supposedly dislike the color.


• If you are “true blue,” you are loyal and faithful.


• Blue stands for love, which is why a bride carries or wears something blue on her wedding day.


• A room painted blue is said to be relaxing.


• “Feeling blue” is feeling sad. “Blue devils” are feelings of depression.


• Something “out of the blue” is from an unknown source at an unexpected time.


• A bluebook is a list of socially prominent people.


• The first prize gets a blue ribbon.A blue blood is a person of noble descent. This is probably from the blue veins of the fair-complexioned aristocrats who first used this term.


• “Into the blue” means into the unknown.


• A “bluenose” is a strict, puritanical person.


• A “bluestocking” used to be a scholarly or highly knowledgeable woman.


• The pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore blue for protection against evil.


• The “blues” is a style of music derived from southern African-American secular songs. It influenced the development of rock, R&B, and country music.


• “Blue laws” are used to enforce moral standards.


• A blue ribbon panel is a group of especially qualified people

[/su_spoiler]
[su_spoiler title="Purple" style="fancy"]

• The Egyptian queen Cleopatra loved purple. To obtain one ounce of Tyrian purple dye, she had her servants soak 20,000 Purpura snails for 10 days.


• In Thailand, purple is worn by a widow mourning her husband's death.


• A “purple heart” is a U.S. military decoration for soldiers wounded or killed in battle.


• Purple is a royal color.


• Purple robes are an emblem of authority and rank.


• “Purple speech” is profane talk.


• “Purple prose” is writing that is full of exaggerated literary effects and ornamentation.


• Leonardo da Vinci believed that the power of meditation increases 10 times when done in a purple light, as in the purple light of stained glass.


• Purple in a child's room is said to help develop the imagination according to color theory.

[/su_spoiler]

[su_spoiler title="Yellow" style="fancy"]

• In Egypt and Burma, yellow signifies mourning.


• In Spain, executioners once wore yellow.


• In India, yellow is the symbol for a merchant or farmer.


• In tenth-century France, the doors of traitors and criminals were painted yellow.


• Hindus in India wear yellow to celebrate the festival of spring.


• If someone is said to have a “yellow streak,” that person is considered a coward.


• In Japan during the War of Dynasty in 1357, each warrior wore a yellow chrysanthemum as a pledge of courage.


• A yellow ribbon is a sign of support for soldiers at the front.


• Yellow is a symbol of jealousy and deceit.


• In the Middle Ages, actors portraying the dead in a play wore yellow.


• To holistic healers, yellow is the color of peace.


• Yellow has good visibility and is often used as a color of warning. It is also a symbol for quarantine, an area marked off because of danger.


• “Yellow journalism” refers to irresponsible and alarmist reporting.

[/su_spoiler]

[su_spoiler title="White" style="fancy"]

• A white flag is the universal symbol for truce.


• White means mourning in China and Japan.


• Angels are usually depicted wearing white robes.


• The ancient Greeks wore white to bed to ensure pleasant dreams.


• The Egyptian pharaohs wore white crowns.


• The ancient Persians believed all gods wore white.


• A “white elephant” is a rare, pale elephant considered sacred to the people of India, Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka; in this country, it is either a possession that costs more than it is worth to keep or an item that the owner doesn't want but can't get rid of.


• It's considered good luck to be married in a white garment.


• White heat is a state of intense enthusiasm, anger, devotion, or passion.


• To whitewash is to gloss over defects or make something seem presentable that isn't.


• A “white knight” is a rescuer.


• A white list contains favored items (as opposed to a blacklist).


• A “whiteout” occurs when there is zero visibility during a blizzard.


• A “white sale” is a sale of sheets, towels, and other bed and bath items.


• A “whited sepulcher” is a person who is evil inside but appears good on the outside, a hypocrite.


• “White lightning” is slang for moonshine, a homebrewed alcohol.


• A white room is a clean room as well as a temperature-controlled, dust-free room for precision instruments.


• White water is the foamy, frothy water in rapids and waterfalls.

[/su_spoiler]

[su_spoiler title="Black" style="fancy"]

• The ancient Egyptians and Romans used black for mourning, as do most Europeans and Americans today.


• The “Blackshirts” were the security troops in Hitler's German army, also known as the S.S.


• Black often stands for secrecy.


• Black humor is morbid or unhealthy and gloomy humor.


• A “blackhearted” person is evil.


• If a business is “in the black,” it is making money.


• A “blacklist” is a list of persons or organizations to be boycotted or punished.


• Black is associated with sophistication and elegance. A “black tie” event is formal.


• A black belt in karate identifies an expert.


• A black flag in a car race is the signal for a driver to go to the pits.


• A blackguard is a scoundrel.


• The ancient Egyptians believed that black cats had divine powers.


• Black lung is a coal miner's disease caused by the frequent inhaling of coal dust.


• Blackmail is getting things by threat.


• Black market is illegal trade in goods or money.


• A black sheep is an outcast.


• “Blackwash” (as opposed to “whitewash”) is to uncover or bring out in the light.


• A blackout is a period of darkness from the loss of electricity, for protection against night-time air raids, or, in the theater, to separate scenes in a play.


• When you “black out,” you temporarily lose consciousness.

[/su_spoiler]

Colors in digital world

In desktop publishing and design choosing color based on its symbolism applies to print and electronic projects from logos to Web site backgrounds.

Colors are more than a combination of red and blue or yellow and black. They are non-verbal communication. They have meaning that goes beyond ink.

When selecting colors for your blog, take a pre-emptive stance and research the color’s meaning for any negative connotations that might relate to your topic. For example, if you have a food blog, steer clear of using a lot of blue. Some say that the color blue suppresses the appetite.

So...

So use the color in situations where you are trying to persuade. Use shades of brown and green to relax people and say you are environmentally friendly. Use red to kick people into action. And so on.

McDonald's, apparently, use red and yellow because red=fast and yellow=hunger (hence fast food!).

Remember also that meaning is what we create. It does not exist in the color itself and individual meanings may or may not exist in different cultures and individuals.

Read more

What Colors Mean

Like death and taxes, there is no escaping color. It is ubiquitous. Yet what does it all mean? Why are people more relaxed in green rooms? Why do weightlifters do their best in blue gyms?

Colors evoke emotion. Colors have meanings that vary between cultures and even personal preference.

Of course, the shade of a color can change the meaning, too. For example, yellow might be cheerful, but a darker yellow might be considered dingy. An olive green can feel earthy, while a forest green can symbolize affluence.

Color symbolism is the use of color to represent traditional, cultural, or religious ideas, concepts, or feelings or to evoke physical reactions.

What do individual colors mean in detail:

	Beige
	Black
	Blue	(plus azure | beryl | cerulean | cobalt | corporate blue | indigo | navy | sapphire)
	Brown
	Gold
	Gray
	Green	(plus chartreuse)
	Ivory
	Lavender
	Orange
	Pink	(plus fuchsia)
	Purple	(plus lilac | plum | violet)
	Red	(plus blood red | crimson | scarlet | vermilion)
	Silver
	Turquoise
	White
	Yellow

Please note that while color symbolism applies to colors wherever they are used, this series of articles on color meanings focuses primarily on the use of color in print and Web projects for desktop publishing and graphic design. While some scientific studies are noted, there are no absolutes. Color preferences and meanings are personal and subjective and no one size or situation fits all.

However, speaking in generalities,following Table gives you a sense of what some basic colors typically mean :

Color	Various Meanings
Red	Passion, love, energy, danger, strength, importance, excitement, desire, speed, power, heat, aggression, fire, blood, war, violence, all things intense and passionate.
Pink	Symbolizes love and romance, caring, tenderness, acceptance and calm.
Beige and ivory	Symbolize unification. Ivory symbolizes quiet and pleasantness. Beige symbolizes calm and simplicity.
Turquoise	Symbolizes calm. Teal symbolizes sophistication. Aquamarine symbolizes water. Lighter turquoise has a feminine appeal.
Orange	Heat, endurance, vitality, health, inviting, energy, balance, enthusiasm, warmth, vibrant, expansive, flamboyant, demanding of attention.
Yellow	Courage, energizing, pleasant, cheerful, joy, happiness, betrayal, optimism, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, gold, philosophy, dishonesty, cowardice, jealousy, covetousness, deceit, illness, hazard and friendship.
Green	Safety, wealth, freshness, calming, nature, environment, healthy, good luck, renewal, youth, spring, generosity, fertility, jealousy, inexperience, envy, misfortune, vigor.
Purple	Royalty, nobility, spirituality, ceremony, mysterious, transformation, wisdom, enlightenment, cruelty, honor, arrogance, mourning.
Blue	Loyalty, tranquility, responsibility, peace, tranquility, cold, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty, sky, water, technology, depression, appetite suppressant.
Lavender	Symbolizes femininity, grace and elegance.
Black	Elegance, power, death, grief, authority, sexuality, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, mystery, fear, evil, unhappiness, depth, style, sadness, remorse, anger, anonymity, underground, good technical color, mourning.
Brown	Earthliness, warm, dependability, wistful, woodsy, stability, hearth, home, outdoors, reliability, comfort, endurance, simplicity, and comfort.
White	Reverence, purity, birth, simplicity, cleanliness, peace, humility, precision, innocence, youth, winter, snow, good, sterility, marriage (Western cultures), death (Eastern cultures), cold, clinical.
Gray	Security, reliability, intelligence, staid, modesty, dignity, maturity, solid, conservative, practical, old age, sadness, boring. Silver symbolizes calm.

Physical and Cultural reactions to colors

Sometimes colors create a physical reaction (red has been shown to raise blood pressure) and at other times it is a cultural reaction (in the U.S. white is for weddings, in some Eastern cultures, white is the color for mourning and funerals). 

Relation with Colors

• Temperature
• The more towards the red end of spectrum you go, the hotter it gets.
• The more towards the blue/purple end of the spectrum you go, the colder it gets.
• Weight:
• Darker and more intense colors seem heavier.
• Lighter colors seem, unsurprisingly, lighter.
• Money:
• Darker colors, such as burgundy red, tend to show opulence (they are often called 'rich' colors).
• Dull shades, such as gray and dark browns indicate poverty.
• Seasons:
• Pastel and light shades are delicate, feminine, springtime.
• Bright shades of primary colors indicate summer.
• Earthy shades of brown, yellow and orange speak of nature and the fall.
• Cool shades of white, black and blue represent winter.

Uses in retail business

Here are some ways in which colors are used in retail and business:

• Red: Creates urgency - often used in sales and impulse sales
• Green: Easy, calm - used to relax people
• Blue: Creates trust - used by financial institutions such as banks
• Navy blue: Cheaper - selling to price-sensitive
• Royal blue: Urgency - selling to impulse buyer
• Pink: Romantic - selling to women and girls
• Yellow: Grabbing attention - used in displays and windows
• Orange: Energizing - used to push for action, as in impulse buying
• Purple: Calm - used in anti-aging products
• Black: Power - selling luxury, aggressive products, or to impulse buyers

Color can even change what you taste. Customers who bought 7-Up cans that had their color changed to yellow reported that the drink tasted more lemony.

"An executive for a paint company received complaints from workers in a blue office that the office was too cold. When the offices were painted a warm peach, the sweaters came off even though the temperature had not changed."

Choosing colors based on symbolism can apply to everything from clothing to wall paint to home furnishings.

Colors Around the World

Go on and see what colors mean around the world :

Red

• For the ancient Romans, a red flag was a signal for battle
• Because of its visibility, stop signs, stoplights, brake lights, and fire equipment are all painted red.
• The ancient Egyptians considered themselves a red race and painted their bodies with red dye for emphasis.
• In Russia, red means beautiful. The Bolsheviks used a red flag as their symbol when they overthrew the tsar in 1917. That is how red became the color of communism.
• In India, red is the symbol for a bride.
• In South Africa, red is the color of mourning.
• It's considered good luck to tie a red bow on a new car.
• In China, red is the color of good luck and is used as a holiday and wedding color. Chinese babies are given their names at a red-egg ceremony.
• Superstitious people think red frightens the devil.
• A “red-letter day” is one of special importance and good fortune
• In Greece, eggs are dyed red for good luck at Easter time
• Red is the color most commonly found in national flags.
• The “Redshirts” were the soldiers of the Italian leader Garibaldi, who unified modern Italy in the nineteenth century.
• To “see red” is to be angry.
• A “red herring” is a distraction, something that takes attention away from the real issue.
• A “red eye” is an overnight airplane flight.
• If a business is “in the red,” it is losing money.

Green

• Only one national flag is a solid color: the green flag of Libya.
• Ancient Egyptians colored the floors of their temples green.
• In ancient Greece, green symbolized victory.
• In the highlands of Scotland, people wore green as a mark of honor.
• Green is the national color of Ireland.
• A “greenback” is slang for a U.S. dollar bill.
• Green means “go.” When “all systems are green,” it means everything is in order.
• The green room of a concert hall or theater is where performers relax before going onstage.
• The “green-eyed monster” is jealousy.
• A greenhorn is a newcomer or unsophisticated person
• Green is youthful.
• Being “green around the gills” is looking pale and sickly.
• “Green with envy” means full of envy or jealousy.
• A person with a “green thumb” is good at making plants grow.
• A green, or common, is a town park.
• Green is a healing color, the color of nature.

Blue

• In ancient Rome, public servants wore blue. Today, police and other public servants wear blue.
• In Iran, blue is the color of mourning.
• Blue was used as protection against witches, who supposedly dislike the color.
• If you are “true blue,” you are loyal and faithful.
• Blue stands for love, which is why a bride carries or wears something blue on her wedding day.
• A room painted blue is said to be relaxing.
• “Feeling blue” is feeling sad. “Blue devils” are feelings of depression.
• Something “out of the blue” is from an unknown source at an unexpected time.
• A bluebook is a list of socially prominent people.
• The first prize gets a blue ribbon.A blue blood is a person of noble descent. This is probably from the blue veins of the fair-complexioned aristocrats who first used this term.
• “Into the blue” means into the unknown.
• A “bluenose” is a strict, puritanical person.
• A “bluestocking” used to be a scholarly or highly knowledgeable woman.
• The pharaohs of ancient Egypt wore blue for protection against evil.
• The “blues” is a style of music derived from southern African-American secular songs. It influenced the development of rock, R&B, and country music.
• “Blue laws” are used to enforce moral standards.
• A blue ribbon panel is a group of especially qualified people

Purple, Violet

• The Egyptian queen Cleopatra loved purple. To obtain one ounce of Tyrian purple dye, she had her servants soak 20,000 Purpura snails for 10 days.
• In Thailand, purple is worn by a widow mourning her husband's death.
• A “purple heart” is a U.S. military decoration for soldiers wounded or killed in battle.
• Purple is a royal color.
• Purple robes are an emblem of authority and rank.
• “Purple speech” is profane talk.
• “Purple prose” is writing that is full of exaggerated literary effects and ornamentation.
• Leonardo da Vinci believed that the power of meditation increases 10 times when done in a purple light, as in the purple light of stained glass.
• Purple in a child's room is said to help develop the imagination according to color theory.
• Richard Wagner composed his operas in a room with shades of violet, his color of inspiration.

Yellow

• In Egypt and Burma, yellow signifies mourning.
• In Spain, executioners once wore yellow.
• In India, yellow is the symbol for a merchant or farmer.
• In tenth-century France, the doors of traitors and criminals were painted yellow.
• Hindus in India wear yellow to celebrate the festival of spring.
• If someone is said to have a “yellow streak,” that person is considered a coward.
• In Japan during the War of Dynasty in 1357, each warrior wore a yellow chrysanthemum as a pledge of courage.
• A yellow ribbon is a sign of support for soldiers at the front.
• Yellow is a symbol of jealousy and deceit.
• In the Middle Ages, actors portraying the dead in a play wore yellow.
• To holistic healers, yellow is the color of peace.
• Yellow has good visibility and is often used as a color of warning. It is also a symbol for quarantine, an area marked off because of danger.
• “Yellow journalism” refers to irresponsible and alarmist reporting.

White

• A white flag is the universal symbol for truce.
• White means mourning in China and Japan.
• Angels are usually depicted wearing white robes.
• The ancient Greeks wore white to bed to ensure pleasant dreams.
• The Egyptian pharaohs wore white crowns.
• The ancient Persians believed all gods wore white.
• A “white elephant” is a rare, pale elephant considered sacred to the people of India, Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka; in this country, it is either a possession that costs more than it is worth to keep or an item that the owner doesn't want but can't get rid of.
• It's considered good luck to be married in a white garment.
• White heat is a state of intense enthusiasm, anger, devotion, or passion.
• To whitewash is to gloss over defects or make something seem presentable that isn't.
• A “white knight” is a rescuer.
• A white list contains favored items (as opposed to a blacklist).
• A “whiteout” occurs when there is zero visibility during a blizzard.
• A “white sale” is a sale of sheets, towels, and other bed and bath items.
• A “whited sepulcher” is a person who is evil inside but appears good on the outside, a hypocrite.
• “White lightning” is slang for moonshine, a homebrewed alcohol.
• A white room is a clean room as well as a temperature-controlled, dust-free room for precision instruments.
• White water is the foamy, frothy water in rapids and waterfalls.

Black

• The ancient Egyptians and Romans used black for mourning, as do most Europeans and Americans today.
• The “Blackshirts” were the security troops in Hitler's German army, also known as the S.S.
• Black often stands for secrecy.
• Black humor is morbid or unhealthy and gloomy humor.
• A “blackhearted” person is evil.
• If a business is “in the black,” it is making money.
• A “blacklist” is a list of persons or organizations to be boycotted or punished.
• Black is associated with sophistication and elegance. A “black tie” event is formal.
• A black belt in karate identifies an expert.
• A black flag in a car race is the signal for a driver to go to the pits.
• A blackguard is a scoundrel.
• The ancient Egyptians believed that black cats had divine powers.
• Black lung is a coal miner's disease caused by the frequent inhaling of coal dust.
• Blackmail is getting things by threat.
• Black market is illegal trade in goods or money.
• A black sheep is an outcast.
• “Blackwash” (as opposed to “whitewash”) is to uncover or bring out in the light.
• A blackout is a period of darkness from the loss of electricity, for protection against night-time air raids, or, in the theater, to separate scenes in a play.
• When you “black out,” you temporarily lose consciousness.

Colors in digital world

In desktop publishing and design choosing color based on its symbolism applies to print and electronic projects from logos to Web site backgrounds.

Colors are more than a combination of red and blue or yellow and black. They are non-verbal communication. They have meaning that goes beyond ink.

When selecting colors for your blog, take a pre-emptive stance and research the color’s meaning for any negative connotations that might relate to your topic. For example, if you have a food blog, steer clear of using a lot of blue. Some say that the color blue suppresses the appetite.

So...

So use the color in situations where you are trying to persuade. Use shades of brown and green to relax people and say you are environmentally friendly. Use red to kick people into action. And so on.

McDonald's, apparently, use red and yellow because red=fast and yellow=hunger (hence fast food!).

Remember also that meaning is what we create. It does not exist in the color itself and individual meanings may or may not exist in different cultures and individuals.

Read more

Selecting Colors

Bright shades, moody tones — when it comes to designing your blog, selecting colors often becomes the most fun part of design. Different colors have different personalities, and each shade of color can imply different things. This chapter guides you through making the best choices of color for your blog design.

If you already have a blog, you can read this chapter from the perspective of deciding whether to change your existing colors or not. If you’re starting a new blog or completely redesigning your blog, this chapter can help you select colors that match your personality and blog content.

Colors communicate a lot about your blog’s brand and make an impression on your readers, so you have to get these right.

So keep reading to see how to find the perfect colors for your blog and select ones that don’t clash. I also give you a crash course on the color wheel, what colors mean, and how to effectively use color throughout your blog design.

Choosing Colors

Colors matter, but don’t take my word for it. According to The Institute for Color Research, between 62 and 90 percent of a person’s assessment of an environment is based on color alone. Color can also improve readership by 40 percent. I don’t know about you, but those stats got my attention.

So what colors jump to mind when you think about certain brands? How about UPS? Brown, of course. What about Coke? Red. Although you don’t have to employ a strong color association, colors can help you define your overall brand.

Colors can also help establish a tone, or mood, with your readers. If your writing style is punchy and humorous, then bright, vivid colors would work better with your blog design than somber colors like industrial gray or a pale blue. See the section “Exploring what colors mean” to learn how different colors evoke certain emotions.

These next sections give you a better understanding of colors and how to combine them on your blog design. I also share a way to determine which colors work best for your blog and then list some inspirational places to find colors galore.

Knowing the Color Wheel

Ah, our old friend, the color wheel, which is simply a circular diagram that shows relationships between colors and serves as a tool to help you understand why certain colors work better together than others.

A standard color wheel shows primary, secondary, and tertiary hues, which are the purest form of a color:

• Primary colors: You probably already know that red, yellow, and blue make up the three primary colors. All other colors stem from these three biggies. If you’re wondering why all the talk about RGB (red, green, blue) and not RYB in image editing and web design, see the next section.
• Secondary colors: These colors are combined by mixing primary colors: orange (red+yellow), green (yellow+blue), and purple or violet (red+blue).
• Tertiary colors: This third level of colors are created by mixing a primary color with a secondary color: red-orange, red-violet, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-violet, and blue-green.

If you were to go a deeper into a color wheel (or play with a color picker online or in an image-editing program), you would see these variations of each hue:

• Tint: A hue made lighter by adding white 
• Shade: A hue made darker by adding black 
• Tone: A hue mixed with gray

Defining RGB and hex color codes

If all colors come from red, yellow, and blue, you might be wondering why we often look at onscreen colors in terms of RGB and hex (short for hexadecimal) colors.

RGB is a three-color additive color model used for light-based devices, such as TVs, computer screens, and digital cameras. Pixels on backlit screens are dark until you add various levels of red, green, and blue light, which create an array of colors.

Hexadecimal numbers represent the red, green, and blue values with a sixdigit code that begins with a hash (#) symbol. The six-digit code is essentially broken down into three, two-digit values that use a mix of numbers and letters. The lowest value given is 00 (meaning no light), and the highest is FF (meaning the highest amount of light). This makes sense when you think of twocommon hex codes you might see: #000000 (black) and #ffffff (white).

So, when designing blogs, you use hexadecimal numbers (hex codes) to give certain design elements color values. You can create more than 16 million colors using hex codes! That means you definitely have lots of choices when it comes to colors for your blog design!

If you visit a website and love the colors, you can find out exactly what colors they are with ColorZilla, a free browser add-on for Chrome and Firefox.

Creating color harmony

Just as certain fonts go well together, so do certain colors. I’m sure you’ve seen a color scheme before and said, “Oh, that clashes!” And finding color harmony can be as simple as understanding one tool: the color wheel. After you understand how to create color harmony using the color wheel, creating color schemes for your blog design is much less of a mystery.

Here are the basic schemes created using the color wheel as a tool (as shown in Figure below):

• Analogous color scheme: Uses three or more colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. 
• Monochromatic color scheme: Uses tints, tones, and values within the same family.
• Triadic color scheme: Uses three colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel.
• Square color scheme: Uses four colors evenly spaced around the color wheel.
• Complementary color scheme: Uses colors opposite of one another on the color wheel.
• Split complementary color scheme: Uses one color paired with two colors on both sides of that color’s direct complementary color.
• Tetrad (or rectangular) color scheme: Uses four colors arranged by two complementary pairs. 
• Diad color scheme: Uses two colors that are two colors apart on the color wheel, with one color skipped in between.

In the everyday world, we may not talk about tetrad or diad color schemes, but most folks can relate to warm and cool colors. Looking at the color wheel again, you can see how the colors are divided into warm and cool:

• Warm: Red, orange, yellow, and variations of those colors
• Cool: Green, blue, purple, and variations of those colors 

And not to complicate life, but you can also have “cooler” oranges or “warmer” purples. For example, a cool color can have red, orange, or yellow undertones, and a warm color can have green, blue, or purple undertones.

And here is why color choice matters: Both warm and cool colors can evoke both positive or negative emotions. Warmer colors can evoke a sense of anything from coziness and happiness (sunny yellow) to anger and aggression (blood red). Cooler colors can bring a sense of calmness and relaxation (sky blue) or can feel indifferent or subdued (steel gray).

Finding color inspiration

Colors, colors everywhere! With the color wheel as your foundation and guide, peruse the web for color inspiration. Many places offer colors and color schemes that you can use as-is or let them serve as a jumping point into creating your own color combinations.

• Kuler: Kuler, has long been one of my favorite sites for color combo inspirations. Create your own color swatch or choose one submitted by the community. The site showcases five-swatch color palettes that you can search by keyword, such as “nature” or “bold.” You can even download these color palettes and open them up in Adobe programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. It’s magical. 
  
• COLOURlovers: This community-based site allows users to create and share color palettes from all over the world. Here, you can also find paid color tools (such as ColorSchemer) to build color schemes, or you can design a seamless pattern (for free using Seamless Lite, or the paid version Seamless Studio).
• Design Seeds: Jessica from Design Seeds has many years of experience as a color specialist, and it shows. She starts with a photograph and then creates a custom color palette based on the photo (without using an eyedropper tool that merely pulls a color from a photo). Her talent is impressive, and this site is serious eye candy. Each palette includes the hex codes so you can use a palette in your own blog design.
• Pantone: Pantone is the authority on color. Sift through their top colors, the color of the year, and seasonal colors to find some cool ones that fit your blog.
• ColorCombos: The ColorCombos site provides articles on color, color combination palettes, and tools like the Color Tester tool, which lets you play around with color combinations.

You can find color inspiration from everyday things all around you: nature, products or displays in a store, photos, everyday household items, food, paint swatches, and more.

And if you have an iPhone or iPad, give the Palettes app a whirl (). Create color schemes by pulling colors from a website or picture or add colors using one of five color models. Palettes comes in three offerings: Free, Basic, and Pro.

Deciding on colors to match your brand

The colors that visitors see when they land on your blog make a psychologi- cal impact within seconds. Not only do humans unconsciously attach mean- ing to certain colors, but visitors will also form instant impressions about your blog based on color.

This association happens so instantly you probably don’t realize it — but, colors can make or break your blog design. I’m sure you’ve been to a blog or website that immediately felt welcoming and cozy. Or perhaps you’ve been to a website with colors so loud and mismatched that you assumed the blog’s content would be horrible.

Colors also convey emotion and visually set the tone for your blog. In fact, your colors should help reinforce what your blog is about. For example, if you blog about a serious subject, you probably don’t want to use loud, fluorescent colors. If your writing is hysterically funny, you don’t want subdued, muted colors.

In image given below, notice how the blog Intimate Weddings uses light colors to create an intimate setting. The blog wouldn’t give off the same vibe with a turquoise rather than a pale blue, or a bright orange rather than a softer, lighter orange.

Deciding on the exact colors can seem like a fun yet overwhelming process. Start by looking at some of the places that I mention in the earlier section, “Finding color inspiration.” If you want to try creating a color scheme yourself, follow these basic steps:

1. Start with a basic color that inspires you. It’s your blog, so you should like the colors, but also consider your audience. If you love hot pink but your blog is geared toward financial advisors, you may want to start with another color that you love.
2. Jot down the topic you write about and a few words that describe your blog’s voice and tone. If you write about many topics, try to think as broadly as possible. Bringing these tidbits of information top-of-mind gets those creative juices flowing so you can choose a color that really fits your blog. 
3. Select a more specific color based on Steps 1 and 2 to narrow down your basic color to a hue, tint, shade, or tone that will be the most fitting.
   Do bright colors fit your blog the best? Are pastels the way to go? Earthy?, rich?, warm?, cool?, and so on. Also remember to consider what certain colors mean.
4. Finish your blog design’s color scheme by adding more colors. See the earlier section, “Creating color harmony” for help with creating colors that look good together.

If you aren’t sure which color to start with, try this exercise a few times with a different starting color. You can then have a few color schemes to choose from.

Determining how many colors to use

You don’t just need to choose colors for your blog design: You also need to consider how many colors and how much of each color will appear in your design. You really don’t have to abide by any set rule for this, but the following guidelines offer a good starting point:

• Start with three colors. White and black typically don’t count toward your three-color palette. What I’m talking about here are the splashes of color that call attention to different parts of your blog to add visual appeal. Again, three isn’t a rule but a nice starting point. Many blogs (including my own) use five or six colors, and some use just one or two.
  If you decide to add colors beyond your initial three, combining them effectively becomes trickier. To use more color while still maintaining coherence among the colors in your design, try using tints, shades, and tones from one color.
• Apply colors using the 60-30-10 rule to create a harmonious design.The 60-30-10 rule stems from interior design but is often used by web designers to create a nice balance of color. Typically, the 60-30-10 rule means:
  
  • A primary color covers 60 percent of your design.
  • A secondary color covers 30 percent.
  • An accent color finishes the remaining 10 percent of your design.
  You don’t have to follow the 60-30-10 rule exactly. In fact, many bloggers modify this rule a bit, because their blog’s purpose is showcasing photography. (Food bloggers, travel bloggers, and of course photography bloggers all come to mind.) On these blogs, the design is mostly white so that photos stand out and “design” colors don’t interfere with how the color photos are perceived. If your blog uses lots of photos or you simply want a white, airy design, you can still maintain the 60-30-10 proportions among the colored elements.
  A great example is the blog Oh My Veggies, shown in image given below. Kiersten’s blog uses a colorful palette of yellow, green, and orange without detracting from her mouth-watering food photos. The blog design still gives off a vibrant feel without being too heavy with color. Moreover, notice how the blog uses the three colors in different proportions, using mostly yellow, then green, and then just a few splashes of orange. 
  

The upshot: Vary the degree to which you use each color in your design. You don’t want all the colors to have equal weight.

Read more

Selecting Colors

Bright shades, moody tones — when it comes to designing your blog, selecting colors often becomes the most fun part of design. Different colors have different personalities, and each shade of color can imply different things. This chapter guides you through making the best choices of color for your blog design.

If you already have a blog, you can read this chapter from the perspective of deciding whether to change your existing colors or not. If you’re starting a new blog or completely redesigning your blog, this chapter can help you select colors that match your personality and blog content.

Colors communicate a lot about your blog’s brand and make an impression on your readers, so you have to get these right.

So keep reading to see how to find the perfect colors for your blog and select ones that don’t clash. I also give you a crash course on the color wheel, what colors mean, and how to effectively use color throughout your blog design.

Choosing Colors

Colors matter, but don’t take my word for it. According to The Institute for Color Research, between 62 and 90 percent of a person’s assessment of an environment is based on color alone. Color can also improve readership by 40 percent. I don’t know about you, but those stats got my attention.

So what colors jump to mind when you think about certain brands? How about UPS? Brown, of course. What about Coke? Red. Although you don’t have to employ a strong color association, colors can help you define your overall brand.

Colors can also help establish a tone, or mood, with your readers. If your writing style is punchy and humorous, then bright, vivid colors would work better with your blog design than somber colors like industrial gray or a pale blue. See the section “Exploring what colors mean” to learn how different colors evoke certain emotions.

These next sections give you a better understanding of colors and how to combine them on your blog design. I also share a way to determine which colors work best for your blog and then list some inspirational places to find colors galore.

Knowing the Color Wheel

Ah, our old friend, the color wheel, which is simply a circular diagram that shows relationships between colors and serves as a tool to help you understand why certain colors work better together than others.

A standard color wheel shows primary, secondary, and tertiary hues, which are the purest form of a color:

• Primary colors: You probably already know that red, yellow, and blue make up the three primary colors. All other colors stem from these three biggies. If you’re wondering why all the talk about RGB (red, green, blue) and not RYB in image editing and web design, see the next section.
• Secondary colors: These colors are combined by mixing primary colors: orange (red+yellow), green (yellow+blue), and purple or violet (red+blue).
• Tertiary colors: This third level of colors are created by mixing a primary color with a secondary color: red-orange, red-violet, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-violet, and blue-green.

If you were to go a deeper into a color wheel (or play with a color picker online or in an image-editing program), you would see these variations of each hue:

• Tint: A hue made lighter by adding white 
• Shade: A hue made darker by adding black 
• Tone: A hue mixed with gray

Defining RGB and hex color codes

If all colors come from red, yellow, and blue, you might be wondering why we often look at onscreen colors in terms of RGB and hex (short for hexadecimal) colors.

RGB is a three-color additive color model used for light-based devices, such as TVs, computer screens, and digital cameras. Pixels on backlit screens are dark until you add various levels of red, green, and blue light, which create an array of colors.

Hexadecimal numbers represent the red, green, and blue values with a sixdigit code that begins with a hash (#) symbol. The six-digit code is essentially broken down into three, two-digit values that use a mix of numbers and letters. The lowest value given is 00 (meaning no light), and the highest is FF (meaning the highest amount of light). This makes sense when you think of twocommon hex codes you might see: #000000 (black) and #ffffff (white).

So, when designing blogs, you use hexadecimal numbers (hex codes) to give certain design elements color values. You can create more than 16 million colors using hex codes! That means you definitely have lots of choices when it comes to colors for your blog design!

If you visit a website and love the colors, you can find out exactly what colors they are with ColorZilla, a free browser add-on for Chrome and Firefox.

Creating color harmony

Just as certain fonts go well together, so do certain colors. I’m sure you’ve seen a color scheme before and said, “Oh, that clashes!” And finding color harmony can be as simple as understanding one tool: the color wheel. After you understand how to create color harmony using the color wheel, creating color schemes for your blog design is much less of a mystery.

Here are the basic schemes created using the color wheel as a tool (as shown in Figure below):

• Analogous color scheme: Uses three or more colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel. 
• Monochromatic color scheme: Uses tints, tones, and values within the same family.
• Triadic color scheme: Uses three colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel.
• Square color scheme: Uses four colors evenly spaced around the color wheel.
• Complementary color scheme: Uses colors opposite of one another on the color wheel.
• Split complementary color scheme: Uses one color paired with two colors on both sides of that color’s direct complementary color.
• Tetrad (or rectangular) color scheme: Uses four colors arranged by two complementary pairs. 
• Diad color scheme: Uses two colors that are two colors apart on the color wheel, with one color skipped in between.

In the everyday world, we may not talk about tetrad or diad color schemes, but most folks can relate to warm and cool colors. Looking at the color wheel again, you can see how the colors are divided into warm and cool:

• Warm: Red, orange, yellow, and variations of those colors
• Cool: Green, blue, purple, and variations of those colors 

And not to complicate life, but you can also have “cooler” oranges or “warmer” purples. For example, a cool color can have red, orange, or yellow undertones, and a warm color can have green, blue, or purple undertones.

And here is why color choice matters: Both warm and cool colors can evoke both positive or negative emotions. Warmer colors can evoke a sense of anything from coziness and happiness (sunny yellow) to anger and aggression (blood red). Cooler colors can bring a sense of calmness and relaxation (sky blue) or can feel indifferent or subdued (steel gray).

Finding color inspiration

Colors, colors everywhere! With the color wheel as your foundation and guide, peruse the web for color inspiration. Many places offer colors and color schemes that you can use as-is or let them serve as a jumping point into creating your own color combinations.

• Kuler: Kuler, has long been one of my favorite sites for color combo inspirations. Create your own color swatch or choose one submitted by the community. The site showcases five-swatch color palettes that you can search by keyword, such as “nature” or “bold.” You can even download these color palettes and open them up in Adobe programs like Photoshop and Illustrator. It’s magical. 
  
• COLOURlovers: This community-based site allows users to create and share color palettes from all over the world. Here, you can also find paid color tools (such as ColorSchemer) to build color schemes, or you can design a seamless pattern (for free using Seamless Lite, or the paid version Seamless Studio).
• Design Seeds: Jessica from Design Seeds has many years of experience as a color specialist, and it shows. She starts with a photograph and then creates a custom color palette based on the photo (without using an eyedropper tool that merely pulls a color from a photo). Her talent is impressive, and this site is serious eye candy. Each palette includes the hex codes so you can use a palette in your own blog design.
• Pantone: Pantone is the authority on color. Sift through their top colors, the color of the year, and seasonal colors to find some cool ones that fit your blog.
• ColorCombos: The ColorCombos site provides articles on color, color combination palettes, and tools like the Color Tester tool, which lets you play around with color combinations.

You can find color inspiration from everyday things all around you: nature, products or displays in a store, photos, everyday household items, food, paint swatches, and more.

And if you have an iPhone or iPad, give the Palettes app a whirl (). Create color schemes by pulling colors from a website or picture or add colors using one of five color models. Palettes comes in three offerings: Free, Basic, and Pro.

Deciding on colors to match your brand

The colors that visitors see when they land on your blog make a psychologi- cal impact within seconds. Not only do humans unconsciously attach mean- ing to certain colors, but visitors will also form instant impressions about your blog based on color.

This association happens so instantly you probably don’t realize it — but, colors can make or break your blog design. I’m sure you’ve been to a blog or website that immediately felt welcoming and cozy. Or perhaps you’ve been to a website with colors so loud and mismatched that you assumed the blog’s content would be horrible.

Colors also convey emotion and visually set the tone for your blog. In fact, your colors should help reinforce what your blog is about. For example, if you blog about a serious subject, you probably don’t want to use loud, fluorescent colors. If your writing is hysterically funny, you don’t want subdued, muted colors.

In image given below, notice how the blog Intimate Weddings uses light colors to create an intimate setting. The blog wouldn’t give off the same vibe with a turquoise rather than a pale blue, or a bright orange rather than a softer, lighter orange.

Deciding on the exact colors can seem like a fun yet overwhelming process. Start by looking at some of the places that I mention in the earlier section, “Finding color inspiration.” If you want to try creating a color scheme yourself, follow these basic steps:

1. Start with a basic color that inspires you. It’s your blog, so you should like the colors, but also consider your audience. If you love hot pink but your blog is geared toward financial advisors, you may want to start with another color that you love.
2. Jot down the topic you write about and a few words that describe your blog’s voice and tone. If you write about many topics, try to think as broadly as possible. Bringing these tidbits of information top-of-mind gets those creative juices flowing so you can choose a color that really fits your blog. 
3. Select a more specific color based on Steps 1 and 2 to narrow down your basic color to a hue, tint, shade, or tone that will be the most fitting.
   Do bright colors fit your blog the best? Are pastels the way to go? Earthy?, rich?, warm?, cool?, and so on. Also remember to consider what certain colors mean.
4. Finish your blog design’s color scheme by adding more colors. See the earlier section, “Creating color harmony” for help with creating colors that look good together.

If you aren’t sure which color to start with, try this exercise a few times with a different starting color. You can then have a few color schemes to choose from.

Determining how many colors to use

You don’t just need to choose colors for your blog design: You also need to consider how many colors and how much of each color will appear in your design. You really don’t have to abide by any set rule for this, but the following guidelines offer a good starting point:

• Start with three colors. White and black typically don’t count toward your three-color palette. What I’m talking about here are the splashes of color that call attention to different parts of your blog to add visual appeal. Again, three isn’t a rule but a nice starting point. Many blogs (including my own) use five or six colors, and some use just one or two.
  If you decide to add colors beyond your initial three, combining them effectively becomes trickier. To use more color while still maintaining coherence among the colors in your design, try using tints, shades, and tones from one color.
• Apply colors using the 60-30-10 rule to create a harmonious design. The 60-30-10 rule stems from interior design but is often used by web designers to create a nice balance of color. Typically, the 60-30-10 rule means:
  
  • A primary color covers 60 percent of your design.
  • A secondary color covers 30 percent.
  • An accent color finishes the remaining 10 percent of your design.
  You don’t have to follow the 60-30-10 rule exactly. In fact, many bloggers modify this rule a bit, because their blog’s purpose is showcasing photography. (Food bloggers, travel bloggers, and of course photography bloggers all come to mind.) On these blogs, the design is mostly white so that photos stand out and “design” colors don’t interfere with how the color photos are perceived. If your blog uses lots of photos or you simply want a white, airy design, you can still maintain the 60-30-10 proportions among the colored elements.
  A great example is the blog Oh My Veggies, shown in image given below. Kiersten’s blog uses a colorful palette of yellow, green, and orange without detracting from her mouth-watering food photos. The blog design still gives off a vibrant feel without being too heavy with color. Moreover, notice how the blog uses the three colors in different proportions, using mostly yellow, then green, and then just a few splashes of orange. 
  

The upshot: Vary the degree to which you use each color in your design. You don’t want all the colors to have equal weight.

Read more

Selecting Fonts

Bright shades, moody tones, punchy fonts — when it comes to designing your blog, selecting fonts often becomes the most fun part of design. Different fonts have different personalities, and each shade of color can imply different things. This post guides you through making the best choices of fonts for your blog design.

If you already have a blog, you can read this chapter from the perspective of deciding whether to change your existing fonts. If you’re starting a new blog or completely redesigning your blog, this chapter can help you select fonts that match your personality and blog content.

Fonts communicate a lot about your blog’s brand and make an impression on your readers, so you have to get these right.

So keep reading to see how to find the perfect fonts for your blog and select ones that don’t clash.

Choosing Fonts

Ah, fonts. They’re swirly, scripty, scribbly, and full of personality. The fonts you use talk for you, becoming an extension of your brand and setting the tone for your words.

When you look at your overall blog design, you work with two different kinds of text:

1. Content text: You can identify this text on a blog because it can be highlighted with your cursor. Think blog post titles, headings, and content as well as text in your navigation menu and elements such as bylines and blog post comments. You control the fonts for this text within your cascading style sheet (CSS).
2. Graphical text: This kind of text is a part of an image, such as a blog logo image, header, or other graphical element created in a photo-editing or graphics program (like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator).

In these next few sections, I walk you through things to consider when selecting fonts for your blog design. Before we get to the details, though, you should understand the four common types of fonts, which I describe in following table:

Font Type	Definition	Typical Use
Serif	Has lines or hooks (serifs) extending from parts of a letter.	Commonly used in print publications. Some serif fonts can be harder to read on-screen but can still be used effectively.
Sans serif	No lines or hooks.	Web content, especially paragraphs of text, is most readable in a sans serif font.
Decorative	Includes script, handwritten, or novelty type fonts.	Good option for graphical text within a blog design. Not a good choice for blog post content.
Monospace	All letters and numbers take up the same width (like typewriter keys being the same size).	Best for displaying computer programming code or to replicate typewritten text.

In image, you can see examples of these four font types. Check out the differences between serif and sans serif for the capital T or a lowercase i.

What fonts say about your blog ?

Just like people, every font has its own personality. Some fonts are serious, some are whimsical, and some just scream boldness. The ones you choose for your blog design should mirror your blog’s own voice and personality. Allow your font to help set the mood for your blog’s content. You have so many fonts to choose from that deciding which ones fit your blog design is no easy feat.

Just because you like a font doesn’t mean it’s the right font for your blog design. Text on your blog — say, your blog name or a sidebar heading — makes different impressions on your reader, depending on the font you use. For example, a travel blog that uses a more conservative font may appear to focus on upscale vacations — or, conversely, could use a casual, handwritten font to appear to be more about family-friendly travels.

When selecting a font, consider the topics you write about and the voice and tone in your writing. Say you blog about social media. Well, that alone doesn’t help you when selecting a font. What voice do you write in? What angle do you take? Nuances like these can help you better choose a complementary font.

Or, say you blog about a serious topic with a serious tone. In that case, you don’t want to choose a whimsical, swirly font. However, if your topic is a serious one but you take a different approach — such as an inspirational journey through a battle with illness — then perhaps a swirly font fits.

Check out the font choices of The Art of Manliness blog. The font choices have an old-timey, vintage feel that harkens back to a time long before computers. A modern font wouldn’t have fit with the tagline (Reviving the lost art of manliness) or tone of this blog.

If you’re having a hard time figuring out which fonts fit your blog (or even if you just want more possibilities), try this: Write down some words that describe your blog as a whole. Then look at the font style categories on any of the font providers I discuss in the upcoming section, “Finding fonts,” and match one of your words with one of the font style categories.

Also, look at all the characters and letters of a potential font. For example, if your blog name has an ampersand character (&), make sure you like that font’s ampersand before you choose it.

Choosing web-safe fonts

When you flip through a magazine, those fonts have essentially become images printed onto a page. And on the web, text within graphical elements (like a logo) work the same way.

However, content text (which I define earlier under the section “Choosing Fonts”) is different. Online, from one computer to the next, content text — blog post titles and paragraphs within your blog posts, for example — can display differently

How’s that again? Fonts don’t necessarily look the same on all computers? What’s with that? The reason is that my computer might not have the same fonts installed that your computer has. If you purchase and install a font that I don’t have and then use that font in your blog design, your blog font may look great on your computer but be replaced with a monospace font on mine.

All computers come with a small selection of web-safe fonts, and these fonts are safe to use for your content text. If you don’t want to explore font embedding (which I explain in a moment), then sticking with common web-safe fonts such as the following ones can ensure your blog looks consistent across computers and other devices:

1. Arial
2. Courier
3. Georgia
4. Times New Roman
5. Trebuchet MS
6. Verdana

Expanding your options with embedded fonts

At one point, live text was limited to using web-safe fonts. Luckily, you now have many more interesting choices regarding fonts, thanks to font-embedding technology, which enables you to embed a font into your blog’s web pages. With an embedded font, visitors see the font you selected for your design, even if that font isn’t web-safe.

So what’s the catch? Embedded fonts can slow the download of your blog in a visitor’s browser. Also, for embedded fonts to work, your visitors’ web browsers must support font-embedding.

When it comes to fonts, a browser knows what font to display by the font name listed in your CSS (Cascading Style Sheet). With a web-safe font, a browser displays the font correctly by pulling that font’s information from a computer’s operating system. With an embedded font, a browser displays the font correctly because that website’s CSS defines where a browser can find the font files it needs to display (since the font isn’t on the website visitor’s computer).

Services like Adobe Typekit and Google WebFonts host the fonts for you. When someone visits your blog, your CSS knows to display an embedded font by pulling the font files from another location besides your computer.

To use embedded fonts with one of these services, they provide you with the code you need to make a font display on your blog. Nice! From there, you need to be able to add the code they provide to your blog’s HTML document, usually in a file called header.php on WordPress or by editing your template file in Blogger. You also need to be able to alter your CSS in order to change from your current fonts to the names of the fonts you want to embed.

A more advanced way to use embedded fonts is to use the @font-face property within your CSS. To do this, you need to be familiar enough with coding to either code it manually or use a service like FontSquirrel, which helps you generate the code and files needed to use the @font-face property. The font files can either be hosted on your own server or with a font service like FontSquirrel.

Which fonts to avoid ?

Just like anything creative, telling you which fonts to avoid is mainly a matter of opinion. After all, someone out there uses those fonts for a reason. So instead of telling you, “This font is bad, and that font is ugly,” I want to share some reasons why you should avoid certain fonts or types of fonts:

• To begin, avoid opting for an overused font. Comic Sans, Papyrus, and Brush Script are three culprits (and some of the most loathed fonts out there, too). These fonts scream, “Amateur!” and do little to set your blog design apart from other blogs in your niche. I consider these the three fonts to avoid at all costs!
• Be wary of using fonts that are illegible. Sure, that may sound funny — after all, you’d think that a font’s purpose is to be easily readable. However, some fonts have so many flourishes or so much of a distortion effect that certain words become hard to read.

Finding fonts

With so many places on the web to find fonts, it can be hard to find the best sites. In addition to Google Web Fonts, the following lists point you to some of my favorite places to look for fonts, free or for-fee.

As you go on your font-finding quest, you need to be familiar with font licenses. Font licenses dictate how you can and can’t use a particular font. You’ll commonly see fonts listed as personal use, commercial use, or both. Generally speaking, here’s what these terms mean:

• Personal use refers to usage that isn’t meant to make a profit, such as using a font on a personal blog (that doesn’t generate income) or using a font to create an invitation for your child’s birthday party. 
• Commercial use refers to usage where a company or individual may profit either directly or indirectly from the font’s usage. For example, a person who designs blogs for a living directly profits from a font that they use within a blog design they sell to a client. 

While I provided a general overview in font licensing, each font website varies in how it categorizes fonts for use. Always read the font license before you download or purchase a font.

Free fonts

The following are my favorite resources that offer free fonts:

• dafont.com: dafont is definitely one of the most popular free sites for fonts. At the top of the dafont home page, you can find many categories and subcategories of fonts to choose from — more than 18,000 fonts available for download as of this writing.
• FontSpace: Browse examples of the most popular fonts, new fonts, and new designers. Fonts are clearly marked for personal or commercial use, or both.
• 1001 Fonts: This website offers more than 3,500 fonts in a variety of categories.
• Font Squirrel: All Font Squirrel fonts are free for commercial use, and Font Squirrel offers some of the best quality free fonts available. As you can see in image below, the site is clean and easy to navigate.

For-fee fonts

With so many free fonts available, you may wonder why you should ever pony up money for a font. Although you can’t deny the attractiveness of “free,” and although the web is full of places to get free fonts, here are some benefits to paying for a font that you really like:

• Originality: Many bloggers never pay for a font. So, purchasing a modestly priced font means that fewer designers will likely have it, and fewer readers will likely have seen it. That raises your professional and cool factors. 
• Full character set: Free fonts come with all letters of the alphabet and all numbers, but don’t always have additional characters you might need (such as accented letters) or punctuation (such as quotation marks). Check the character set in the font’s profile before downloading or purchasing.
• Well-kerned characters: Without proper kerning (spacing between characters), some letters might look too far from another, like a capital W beside a capital A, or run together, such as “rn” looking like an m. Fonts that you purchase often have better kerning than a free font. 

If you’d like to check out fonts available for a fee, I suggest you start your search at the following websites:

• Typekit: Using one font can be free. Typekit, by Adobe, is a popular way to use great-looking web-safe fonts in your blog design.
• Fontspring: Fontspring makes it easy to find high-quality fonts, some of which are free. This site is a great resource if you’re looking for fonts to use in both graphic text and content text on your blog.
• MyFonts: This site offers more than 100,000 fonts to choose from (not that you’d look at that many). MyFonts is also the home of the fun and helpful WhatTheFont, where you can upload an image or enter a URL, and the site tries to find the closest match in its database. 
• Fonts.com: Fonts.com has more than 150,000 fonts, which covers just about everything you can think of. The site highlights best-selling fonts and also offers a list of the top 100 fonts. Fonts.com also has a font-identifying tool that walks you through a series of questions when you need to find the name of a font.
• Veer: Veer offers a wide variety of fonts (and images too). Just be aware that the licenses for these fonts covers only graphical text, not content text.

At many of these sites, you can test how a font looks with your own words. In image given below, I’m testing how a blog name looks in a particular font with a particular color.

Of course, you can also find many high-quality, professionally designed fonts at the free sites I mention in this chapter, Google Web Fonts or Font Squirrel.

Some fonts can give you sticker shock because sites often show font packages, which include entire font families. A font family comprises various styles and weights, such as italics, condensed, bold, and semi-bold. If there’s a font within a font family that you really like, you can often purchase a specific font versus the entire family to keep the cost lower.

Combining complementary fonts

A widely accepted design principle says that you shouldn’t use more than three fonts on a layout such as a blog design. Anything more makes a design look messy and hinders concentration. If you’ve ever received a flyer or newsletter with seven or eight completely different fonts, you probably found the lack of unity in the design made it hard to distinguish what parts were most important. And it was probably just hard to read in general!

But as you may have already discovered, simply combining any two or three fonts doesn’t always work because they can clash, look too similar, or just look “off.” Other times, two fonts look great together, and you can’t place just why.

An understanding of how fonts contrast and complement each other can help dispel some of the mystery and guide your font selection. Typically, you can combine fonts by choosing two to three complementary fonts that contrast one another.

To start, consider how you can find contrast among your fonts:

• Thickness: Is your font skinny or fat? Thicker fonts often look nice paired with thinner fonts. Many font families come in different thicknesses, often classified with names such as Light, Medium, Book, Bold, or Heavy. Consider those options, too, when pairing fonts.
  
  If you decide to use a very thin font, be sure to test the font’s legibility within your blog design. A thin font for main headings may be overshadowed by using a thicker font as body text. On the flip side, a thin font used for body text may disappear into the background if the font size is too small.
• Style: Earlier in this post, I talk about the four common types of fonts (serif, sans serif, decorative, and monospace). Try combining a serif with a sans serif font, or a scripty font with a typewriter font. Aside from these types of fonts, there are also so many other classifications of fonts, from grunge to retro, handwriting to calligraphic. The ways to provide contrast based on styles are endless. See image given below for an example of an all caps font paired with a wider, slimmer font.
• Height: Just as fonts can be thin or thick, they can also be short or tall. Some fonts often appear taller because they are condensed, meaning that the kerning is tight, which also provides contrast. Note how the all caps font in above image is taller than the font that’s mostly lowercase. Both the font sizes and the all caps versus mostly lowercase provide contrast in this font pairing. 

In addition to looking at contrast, you can combine fonts that have something in common. For example, you might choose two fonts with tall letters but that are different styles. Or choose fonts within the same family, like pairing a bold and light version of the same font. 

Fonts with too many similarities tend to conflict with one another, so be sure they don’t have too many things in common. No matter how you decide to combine fonts, the fonts you choose should have complementing personalities.

Aside from looking at a font’s style and personality, you can also get technical and look at the following:

• Letterform: Letterform is essentially a letter’s shape. Two fonts with similar letterforms often look good when paired together. Compare the letters a, g, and e to get the best sense of a font’s compatibility.
• x-height: x-height refers to the height from the baseline to the upper part of a lowercase character, such as an x (see image below). Looking at x-height helps you determine fonts of similar proportions. Pairing fonts of similar proportions often look more uniform than fonts with different proportions. Plus, fonts with larger x-heights are typically easier to read so they are good for large blocks of text.

Assigning roles to fonts

When you assign roles to your fonts, you help keep your blog design looking professional. Keeping your font’s purpose clear makes your blog navigation design more effective and your overall design easier on the eyes.

After you choose two or three complementary fonts that also have enough contrast to stand out from each other (see the preceding section), give the different fonts you choose specific roles in your design. To start, establish a visual hierarchy for the fonts. Think about the text elements you have within your blog design, such as the following:

• Blog name
• Tagline
• Navigation menu
• Blog post title
• Subheadings
• Blog post and page content
• Sidebar titles
• Footer headings 

Each element should have a consistent look yet appear cohesive when looking at your entire blog design. By giving each text element a specific look, you create a hierarchy that helps the reader scan your page and digest your content. With the two or three fonts you choose for your blog design, you can establish hierarchy in these text elements by using the following:

• Color: Color naturally attracts the eye, so colored text elements catch the most attention. For example, using a black blog post title with green text beneath would feel a little off because a reader’s eyes might pull to the green text, completely bypassing your post’s title. Save bolder colors for more important text elements to attract the most attention.
• Size: Larger font sizes denote more importance than smaller ones. This means your blog post titles need to be larger than your blog post content. On that same line of thought, subheadings with your blog posts should be smaller than your blog post titles but larger than your blog post content. 
• Weight: Use weights — for example, light, bold, and italics — to create hierarchy without adding more fonts to your design. More heavily weighted text elements carry more importance than lighter design ele ments, so keep this in mind, especially when considering your blog post titles and blog post content text.

In the example shown in image, I chose three fonts. Here’s how I chose to apply each font in the design and how I created a hierarchy within each font grouping as well: 

• The graphic text is an unusual font that appears only on a few elements that remain pretty static within a blog’s design. (Use graphic text sparingly because search engines can’t read it and creating graphic text is more work than content text.) For the blog name, I used both size and color to emphasize the blog name’s importance in the design. I chose the same font for sidebar titles, to carry the font into other parts of the design, but the cool color and smaller size of the sidebar title font clarifies its relationship to the blog name. 
• For the navigation and blog post titles in particular, I needed a font that could display as content text but wanted the font and color to make these elements stand out in the design. To accomplish this, I used an embedded font and grouped all the heading-type elements together with this font, but created a hierarchy of relative importance among the headings by applying different sizes and colors. This embedded font still complements the graphical text in that they use the same letterform, as illustrated in the lowercase a.
• For the blog post and page content font, note that the font selection is much plainer than the blog name and heading fonts so that the main text is easy to read in large bodies of text. This font is also web-safe. With a similar x-height to the other two fonts, this font rounds out the font choices nicely. 

You don’t have to use all these formatting and design options. Just consider them as ways to give each text element a specific role within your blog design.

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