Re: Exciting GNOME?

[Seth Nickell <snickell gmail com>]

> I was working under the impression having less major colours is a good
> thing. From memory, the icons are done using the HIG palette with some
> intermediate colours for gradients and such.
> 
> Designers I have met will tell you when doing a design, pick a small
> number of colours and stick with them. It creates a feeling of
> uniformity throughout a publication or website (or GNOME Desktop).

It does depend on what you're trying to convey. Using a rainbow of
colours conveys a message (perhaps one that's harder to control)  just
as using a limited pallette sends a message. Boxes of crayons are very
common stock images for a reason! Lots of colour can be very pleasant
if its done well. Using only a couple base colours does make life a
lot easier if, like me obviously, you're not a visual designer. Given
that the "pallette" that a theme designer creates (i.e. a set of
widgets and icons) will be used and recombined in lots of different
ways, its probably a lot more dangerous to use a lot of colours. They
just don't have the control. Also, a nice bright button looks good
once, twice, thrice, and after the 100th time you've seen the same
damn button you want to kill yourself.

On the whole, I feel KDE's large numbers of colors are not used to
very good effect. Their use of bright colors, on the other hand, does
have some nice effects (as shown by Jeff's list of shots).

-Seth