When a design looks off, it usually comes down to a few simple rules, and you can check every one of them yourself. On this page: three checks for your color combos, two fall palettes (hex codes included) that show the checks working, and one design edit broken down step by step.
Before
After
This is a free piece of Why it Looks Off, the full digital product. Early bird is $39 until October 9, and three early bird buyers get a design audit by Alena.
An example first. The same coral, with two different sets of colors around it.
Before
The teal and the coral are both shouting, so they compete for your attention. The gray isn't adding anything or complementing either color.
After
The coral didn't change. The teal went dark and the gray went light. Now there's one bright color sitting between a dark and a light.
Three things changed, and each one is a check you can run on any combo.
Only one color gets to be bright. The other two are there to complement it. Two bright colors don't make a piece brighter, they cancel each other out.
Squint at your colors until the shapes blur. If two of them melt together, they're the same lightness, and one has to go lighter or darker.
Your eye reads light and dark before it reads color, which is why designers check their work in black and white.
Tip: Designers call this value, how light or dark a color is.
Roughly 60% background, 30% second color, 10% loud color. When the loud one stops feeling special, there's usually just too much of it.
That's the whole check. In the full version, every palette from the color combos series has already been run through it.
Here's what these checks look like in action, on real designs.
Hex codes on every color, and each palette shows the checks at work in a different way.
Check one, one loud two quiet
The move: The green is dialed down on purpose. That's the only reason the red reads as hot. When the loud color isn't popping, the thing to fix is usually the background.
Use it when: Your design has one strong focal point, like a big illustration or a headline, and everything else should stay quiet around it.
The exception, when two colors sit close
The move: Squint at this and the background and the pear almost blend together, and that's on purpose. Check two would normally tell you to fix it. It works here because the plum is much darker than both of them. Two colors can sit close as long as a third one is much darker.
Use it when: You want a calm design with no bright colors, and you have text or a logo that can go much darker than the rest.
You understood all three before you knew the fancy words for them. The full explanation of each one, and why it works, is in the digital product. See what's in it
That's color. Most of the time, though, the colors are fine and it's everything around them.
The same kind of check works there too. Here's one design edit, broken down all the way.
“It looks homemade and I can't say why.”
Before
After
Eight fonts on one poster. The headline is one, and “of art” is a handwritten second. Then the six labels are six more: a chunky one, a bookish one, a curly one, a typewriter, a stencil and another bookish one.
One font. The headline, and then all six labels in that same font, same thickness, same size, because all six labels do the same job.
The labels don't sit in the same place. Four are at the top of their card, two slid to the bottom.
Every label bar back to the top. Same spot on every card.
The cards don't match. Some corners are rounded, some are square, and one card has an outline that none of the others have.
Every card the same. Same corners, same height, lined up in even rows.
Nothing was redrawn. The shapes, the colors and the layout are identical in both. Each of those three things was a small decision made on its own, and none of them is wrong by itself. That's why it's so hard to name.
Things that do the same job should look the same. Titles with titles, labels with labels, cards with cards. When they stay visually consistent, the reader knows what goes together and doesn't get confused.
Designers call this the law of similarity, and it's what the poster was breaking: six labels doing one job, set six different ways, so none of them read as a group.
Two palettes out of the whole color library. One design edit out of all of them. Same depth, a lot more of it, and sorted so you can find the one that matches what you're stuck on right now.
It opens October 9, and every part of it is built exactly like this page.
Buy before it opens and you'll get an email asking for one design you're stuck on. Reply with it and a line about what's bugging you. On launch day Alena picks three, and each one gets gone through properly, in writing, start to finish.
Not what you hoped for? You have 14 days from the day it opens. Email orders@asongstudio.com and I'll refund you, no reasons needed.
Every palette from the videos, with the Pantone and hex codes, all organized for you.
Start from the color you're stuck with, or from what you're making, and get the palettes built around it. Each one shows which color does which job, so you know where every color goes, with the black and white check already run.
The step by step tutorials, written out with what elements you need and what effects you need.
A reel has fifteen seconds. Here every combo is written out in simple language, in order, at your own speed. Plus how the idea came together, so you can start coming up with your own.
Flowers + x-ray
Watercolor + scribble
Cross stitch + type
Text + images
Lace + script
Stickers + fruit
Every design edit, sorted by symptom and feeling.
Start from how it feels. A few yes or no checks on your own design point you at your fix, and every fix is broken down exactly like the one above.
Before
After
Before
After
