April: Color Palettes for Spring (2024)

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April: The Colors of Spring

Designers share their spring palettes...

This month, DTG readers and subscribers of the Design Cafe share some brief comments about the colors they think of in the spring
We hope you enjoy these thoughtful comments as much as we did. BRAVO! Each of these will win a great prize from the Design Center.

Pale pink and robin egg blue

C.A. writes:
"In my opinion, the use of pastel colors across the full spectrum of color would be the best choices for spring. I can see prints with a pale pink color with miniture robin egg blue and white flowers. In my recent past I did not like the color pink all that well - but, now, using that color with other pastels colors is very pretty and fresh looking. In my recent past, I conducted a casual survey in what colors other people like best, I seem be in the minority of loving all the colors of the color wheel, though I do tend to paint with a predominance of orange, red and purple. My computer platform is Macintosh, running 10.4, and my favorite software is Photoshop and Freehand."
[END QUOTE] C.A. is a self employed freelancer from Tumwater, Washington

Use discretion and moderation

M.P. writes:
"Although spring naturally evokes the desire to go all-out with color, especially for designers who have seen enough gray and white all winter, use discretion and moderation.
Soft spring colors, like pastels and muted tones, will add sophistication and a sense of aesthetic taste that you will not get by using fully saturated, bold, rainbow colors. My favorites are spring green, mint, lavender, azure, pastel blue, with a little splash of orange, red, yellow, and purple -- mimicking in a way the little splashes of color that flowers add to the soft, understated colors and "atmosphere" of spring. Save the bold, brash colors for summer!
My favorite applications are Illustrator and Photoshop, and my platform of choice is Mac OS X."
[END QUOTE] M.P. is a desktop publishing professional from Thompsonville, IL, USA

Color for Lutheran churches

AC writes:
"I work in one of the largest Lutheran churches in the country. Our design studio has many things to focus on during the spring time. Our confirmation students, Easter (a big one) and of course the planning that goes into all of our summer mission projects. But one thing is still high on my priority list, and that is color.
Color evokes many things from many people, but in a church, we've got to use it in new ways and ways to reach people that have somehow become disenchanted with church. So color is especially important for us.
When we think about spring, from a church view, we think of Easter, but before we get there we've gone through the dark moments of Lent and Good Friday. So for us, Easter is a spectacle of color and a color bazaar that feeds off the good of everyone in the room. Red, Green, Yellow and Blue - they are musts. But not the primary shades. I simply cannot use these during springtime. I have to go more subtle, soft. I can talk about websites that I like, but I tend to enjoy them all for this or that reason. I could talk about which colors I don't like, but, I don't have any that I don't like. So, I'm going to talk about the ones that we are using here this year, and why.
Mauve. Mauve is a subtle shade of Red. When I think of what Christ did for the Christian, and for ANYONE, Christian or not, I think of Red. But I think of his Love for us, and that makes me feel like mauve. It's warm, rich, but toned down look is just the right shade for me.
Yellow. Yellow reminds me of the splendor of life. The sun brings its warmth into our lives, and as a result the right amount of sunlight produces the spring colors that we love so much.
Blue. Blue can represent the sky, the beauty of what we see up there followed by the color of rain. Some see rain as gray or clear, but I see rain as blue. It's a refreshing, calming choice and I like that.
Green. Green, but not the dark grassy green, but the shades of green that we see in mint or sage. It's simple and soft, it has a no frills side that encourages me when I think of running my bare feet in the grass...the first grass of the new season. I think of a soft, warm feel.
Orange. Orange just always seems to be a good color for springtime. I think of marigolds in their brightest orange colors, and of other orange Missouri spring flowers that seem to line themselves up row by row along the sidewalks of West St. Louis County's most illustrious homes.
There's my color choices for Spring (Easter) and in my small world of being a designer in an in-house design studio for a large church.
Studio 310 does a lot of work on PC and Mac platforms and we are strong fans of Adobe anything. Although, we do like Microsoft Office platform for our business needs."
[END QUOTE] AC is a design professional from Ellisville, MO, USA www.stjstl.net

Back by popular demand...
* Designing Spring (April, 2005)
* April "Colors" (2004)

Happy April

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