Inspiring editorial from MIX Magazine
Here we set out to discover if online colour palette generators are useful tools for colour professionals or simply a shortcut for Instagram content creators.
Building the right colour palette is a complex task. It’s not just about choosing the right shade of blue or green, but also about selecting a collection of colours that work for your brand, your audience and your geographic region, for however long you need it for.
Right now though, there are dozens of websites and Apps that offer to create the perfect palette for you. Some use colour theory principles to put colours together, some use Artificial Intelligence (AI), others create palettes from images or pre-selected colours, and finally, some even choose colours at random. Curious to understand their relevance to colour consultancy and forecasting, we researched some popular tools. While fun, some proved more useful than others.
Adobe Color uses the colour wheel and harmony rules to suggest groups. You drag a colour across the wheel, with others adjusting based on schemes like triadic or monochromatic. The suggested colours originate from mathematical calculations and there is no AI involved, so no curation. The accessibility tools, which allow you to check contrast, or how a colour-blind person would perceive the palettes, could be useful for projects with specific requirements, however the palettes often need refining. Another generator, Paletton, uses similar principles to Adobe Color, but for us, the geeky, function-over-style design didn’t engage our attention for long.
In contrast, Khroma’s interface starts by selecting 50 colours to generate palettes based on preferences. Display options include type on a background, colour blocks, or gradients. It is well designed and quite good at suggesting colour names, but you essentially have to scroll until you find something you like. It does not give you the option to lock a colour in or get variations on other colours. It is also vague on exactly how the algorithm learnt what makes a good colour combination, with an ambiguous statement on the website stating it ‘Learned from thousands of the most popular human-made palettes across the internet.’
Coolors is a well designed and developed platform which generates harmonious random palettes, with minor adjustments possible. The image picker tool, the gradient maker and the collage maker are all useful for creating visuals suitable for social media or blogs, but any creative with access to design software would probably find this tool redundant. The colour names are good, but their origin is unclear.
Though not specifically designed to generate colour palettes, we prompted AI image generator Midjourney and AI copywriter Chat GPT to come up with what they think makes an ideal palette, and the results weren’t overly convincing. Their guesses are based on what colour combinations are currently trending online, making them a possible valid option for immediate implementation. Even the smartest of AIs cannot predict the future (yet). Another issue with most of the AI-powered tools is that they are unclear on their methods, the data they use, and privacy implications, requiring caution for sensitive commercial projects.
Finally, there are colour generators which pick colours completely randomly to generate palettes. Our favourite is @colorschemer on Twitter, with a refreshingly honest approach: ‘I’m trying to find colors that go well together. I’m probably not very good at it because I’m a robot with no sense of style. (I’m a bot)’. With palettes of three colours published every hour, it is worth a detour for the names alone, such as ‘Acquirable Pastel Red, Publishable Cranberry, Jinxed Pale Grey, Unplausible Wintergreen, or Worrying Deep Lilac.’
The value of colour consultancy begins with the why; the rationale behind a colour choice is key to the relevance and longevity of a colour. Random colours from an online algorithm cannot be expected to last for any length of time, never mind forever. So, if you’re looking for a quick way to put together simple colour schemes for, say, a social media post, then digital colour tools will do the job. But if you are looking to create a cohesive colour palette, with context and longevity, then these tools could prove to simply be a distraction, leading you down irrelevant rabbit holes. One last proviso though; this technology is in its infancy. We’ll continue to monitor developments, but in the meantime, trust us when we say, you still need your Colour Hive membership.
MIX Magazine is a quarterly print and digital publication by our creative agency, Colour Hive and is available as part of Colour Hive membership.
Duha Group is a global, industry leading manufacturer of innovative colour marketing tools. We specialise in colour matching, colour mass reproduction and colour system management.
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