As a designer, I always like this essential thing which is color. Finding the right color could be challenging. That’s why I mostly rely on this very fascinating website, Picular.
Picular (or picular.co) is a site to look up colors based on the average colors pulled from Google Images. Not to be confused with Alex Beals’ project$^1$, although I also recommend it to check it out.
When you use this tool, you might have tried searching for “lemon” or “sky” or “St. Patricks Day” for some reason. Let’s be real, those are overused keywords. Lots of people have already searched for those before.
So, why not try things out a little bit differently?
As a person who has used this tool before, here are some clever and peculiar ideas that could change the way you search for colors on Picular.
The Dekusquad from Boku No Hero Academia
I love looking up characters from any movie or series, especially when it comes to anime (I’m not a weeb myself, but I still admire it). It’s mostly because the colors look interesting, and I think to myself, “why didn’t I look up this person?”
If you want to try, think of your favorite character. Not necessarily from anime but try to think of any character from a famous movie or a Netflix series. Taking things a step further, think of your favorite character from a book or a podcast (add “fan art” to the end to get better results).
Speaking of movies and TV shows, you can also search for your favorite movie or TV show. Sometimes, the color could come from a scene from a movie or a show, or a promotional poster.
Some of my favorite TV shows as a monochrome palette
I mostly do this for my favorite movies and TV shows (like the one above). It doesn’t matter what genre that movie or show is, but what matters is the colors that show up.
I mean, most movies and shows are so goddamn beautiful, the colors I expected are also beautiful as well. Heck, you can make a color palette by typing in “euphoria” (I’m not kidding).
Even though I never played any video games nor did I touch just one gaming console in my life, I’m extremely fascinated by it. The character design, the levels, and even the colors (which are pretty appealing).
Just to keep things short, here’s a bunch of game colors I like, as an example:
Some of my favorite video games with nice colors
What I mostly love about album covers is creativity. Once you saw a beautiful album cover in a record store, you can’t help but listen to it and expect that the music should be good. But that’s beside the point.