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Much of the software I write is for performance systems for artists, a situation where UI really matters. Small things like the coherence of the UI color space can really help a user feel more at ease with the interface, and thus create their best work. It also helps if your software doesn’t look like the same old widgets…artists and musicians have strong opinions about their visual UI, and you can get a lot of interest in your software if it looks like different but solid. Modul8 is great in this regard, as is Ableton Live; they don’t really look like any other software out there, but seem to have a nice balance with their widgets.

Ableton Live and Modul8.

My visual art skills aren’t my strongest suit, so any help I can get
finding good looking color combinations for use in my own visual art
and UI design. One of the things I have always admired about the works of Jared Tarbell are his color palettes. His works have always had a kind of natural quality to their coloring, which is even more pronounced because they are algorithmic art. (His work “Substrate” is shown below.) I can’t remember the source, but I read once that he draws his palette from landscape and other nature pictures.

Substrate

However, that isn’t as easy as it might seem…a seemingly color limited picture can contain so many colors that you might as well just choose them on your own. But, I recently found ColourLovers, a site where users list color pallettes, some derived from photos. Here is an example palette from the salt evaporation ponds in south San Francisco. A great resource for the more audio minded among us.

Drawing from a list like this is a quick way to make a more coherent and professional looking UI that doesn’t look like all of the other widgets out there.

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