I can see randomisation having a place (much along the lines of what Joe did in Slot Machine) but randomisation of the whole palette is a bit crazy. Something that I’d like to have in a palette, which neither Source nor F6 palettes offer yet, is 5–6 alternative accent colours. And that’s where I’d use randomisation. A good colour scheme generally has three main colours: a primary colour, a secondary colour — both of which are used throughout the scheme and provide consistency — and an accent colour which often benefits from being different in different spaces (hence a palette of 5-7 colours).
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You can do this by having identical Palette themes except for a change in 1 colour using just Accent for example.
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I’ll add a few examples to the knowledge base when i get a moment to demo using JavaScript to do some randomisation.
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It was just a thought. I understand that it would not be appropriate in all conditions as James and Stuart are saying. But it could be useful in a website showcasing functions of CSS for example. Or just for fun of a restaurant menu, so users get a different feel whenever they visit such a page. I am sure there can be many other uses I cannot imagine right now. I would definitely still like the option to manually choose a colour scheme.
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I have to say I am not a big fan of randomization.
In this case, I would suggest that the randomization is left for users to decide whether to activate it or not. Perhaps by adding “Randomize Once?” and “Randomize?” buttons. Or some other form of user control.
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I like randomisation — where it’s appropriate. But it can be very annoying where it isn’t. For instance, if a restaurant changes its menus every day, changing up the look of the page can signal to the user that what they’re seeing isn’t the same as they saw last time. But if the menu remains the same, randomisation is giving a sense that things have changed when they haven’t. Likewise, in a blog, randomisation can be great if you want to re-present old pieces and mix them up with new ones. OTOH if people are coming back to find something they saw before, and it’s no longer where it was, they might conclude it’s not there.
Bottom line of this is that randomisation is great to have as an option. Personalisation… less so. There has always been more enthusiasm about giving people the ability to personalise than there is appetite on their part for it. Where it is important is in accessibility.
Exactly. But my own reasoning behind not liking randomization is that it dilutes a designer’s vision. That is in addition to user’s annoyance.
Yes, that is probably very true. But if you take a look at Webdeersigns project 32, there are 10 colour schemes to choose from, and they all look amazing, so a designer can use this to randomize such colour schemes as in that example. When I talked about randomizing, I actually meant randomizing some specific colour combination, randomization that randomized the colours randomly, is of course not good, and will surely destroy the layout.
Hi, Kent, yes that is what I meant as well. But I was talking about my personal preferences. I understand that others may very well have a different point of view.
However, I love the Palette stack for its potential use in designing color schemes.
Here‘s a little demo I put together to test Palette with my LockUp stack (which supports Source and F6 color palettes, including for SVGs such as the ‘hamsa‘ or ‘hand of Fatima’ here). Incidentally, this is the same stack specified with container units and pasted into different sized grid containers, resizing automatically.
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I just want to say to @Webdeersign “Nice job on the demo site” and of course, to @habitualshaker for creating Palette in the first place :)
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Thanks @Nick !!
While I am here…I have added a couple of tutorials onto the Knowledge Base pages for Palette now. These walk you through:
- randomising the palette displayed
- creating and styling your own picker buttons
- showing the palette picker only when a trigger is hovered over (see demo)
Hope you find these useful :)
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Hej Stuart, Thank you. I just tested it on my new page, and it works like a charm :-)
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