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July 6, 2007

COLOURlovers: For People Who Like Color

Duncan Riley

34 comments »

colourlovers.jpgKeeping with this week’s theme of niche social networking sites comes COLOURlovers, a design inspiration and information site focused on color.

COLOURlovers is a resource that monitors color trends. COLOURlovers is aimed directly at people who use color and provides a place to compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.

The site was nominated for a Webby Award in the “Community Site” category in 2006 against Flickr, Yahoo! Answer, Delicious & Threadless.

After a re-launch in November, the site has seen rapid growth, building to half a million visitors a month with nearly 15,000 registered members.

COLOURlovers is headed by Darius A Monsef IV and is backed by a “small angel loan”.

Of the niche social networking sites I’ve reviewed this week, COLOURlovers would have to be the coolest so far. Those who don’t work in design won’t see the benefit of a site like this; those that do will lap it up. The next time I’m designing anything, I’ll be visiting COLOURlovers for a liberal dose of color inspiration.

cl2.jpg

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 1:45 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Neomeme » News? There Are No News.

    August 25th, 2007 at 6:40 pm

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  1. Gomzi

    July 6th, 2007 at 1:53 am

    Colorlovers!!! and a plain grey logo!!!?

    They could have used ajax on the site and kept it simple.

  2. website copywriter

    July 6th, 2007 at 1:59 am

    Colorlovers…very interesting. I am not an authority on design whatsoever, but I do love art and colors. Still worth checking out me thinks, thanks!

  3. K.Kaviraj

    July 6th, 2007 at 2:02 am

    … Y shouldent I just use a Photoshop colour pallete or even a MS WORD colour pallete 2 choose my colour which want to include in ma design ( as I usually do ;-) ) …… instead of going to this site and choosing ….. But the site loks gud … and it is a niche idea :-)

  4. Myo Kyaw Htun

    July 6th, 2007 at 2:24 am

    It is interesting. I love color very much

  5. sid

    July 6th, 2007 at 3:05 am

    @K.Kaviraj - pros dont use standard colour swatches. they use colours that have some theme in common with their design. hence the specialised swatches!

  6. teki321

    July 6th, 2007 at 3:09 am

    The same thing with less noise: http://kuler.adobe.com/

  7. Nagu

    July 6th, 2007 at 3:21 am

    Duncan…r u serious?would u really go to this site for ur colors?

  8. Hsien Lei

    July 6th, 2007 at 3:21 am

    FYI, for anyone interested in colors and colorblindness, you should visit Daniel at colblindor.com. He also interviewed Chris Rogers, the founder of ColourLovers.

  9. yodel

    July 6th, 2007 at 5:31 am

    What a stupid idea.

  10. Salvatore Iozzia

    July 6th, 2007 at 5:51 am

    This is an interesting idea. I liked it.

  11. Drama 2.0

    July 6th, 2007 at 6:07 am

    This is getting a little ridiculous Duncan. I’m a fan of niche services, but when I want to read about anything and everything in the Web 2.0 space, I go to Mashable. Previously, when I wanted to read about the more important happenings in the Web 2.0 space, I went to TechCrunch.

  12. KindAndThoughtful

    July 6th, 2007 at 6:17 am

    “I think I love and reverence all arts equally, only putting my own just above the others; because in it I recognize the union and culmination of my own. To me it seems as if when God conceived the world, that was Poetry; He formed it, and that was Sculpture; He colored it, and that was Painting; He peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal Drama.”

  13. Seb Hughes

    July 6th, 2007 at 7:41 am

    The site does use AJAX.

  14. Tim

    July 6th, 2007 at 7:43 am

    Wow, some strange comments on this post.

    Anyway, this site is really great. I see some people don’t appreciate it, and you are all welcome to your opinions, but I have found it very useful.

    I do some design but not a lot, so perhaps for me it was extra useful to go find all these different color palettes that I could choose from in one spot. You are able to see some great combinations that I never would have come up with myself that quickly.

    Very easy to use, and overall a great site. Even if it has left many of the other readers unimpressed. I do believe there are a couple other sites very similar though, but then again it is pretty easy to copy a successful site these days.

    As with all websites, the defining factor of its success is the community it builds around it, and these guys seem to be doing a pretty good job as they have a very large user base.

  15. Pulkit Sachdeva

    July 6th, 2007 at 7:59 am

    @ K.Kaviraj: Because Photoshop’s or MSPaint’s color palette doesn’t tell you what colors compliment each other and what combinations would look good while building a site/interface!

    Colourlovers is a site where you don’t “pick” colors, rather you share and get color combination ideas from other users who have made such complimenting palettes, the color combinations in which never fail to impress. Unless of course you’re a retard.

    Check out the site first, get to know about its aimed at and then speak up. It is because of ignorant people like you that this site has an outdated and pretty much awfully bland layout and color scheme. Can ya dig that?

  16. Darius A Monsef IV

    July 6th, 2007 at 8:41 am

    Thanks for the coverage Duncan.

    @Gomz: COLOURlovers’ logo and site design colors are grayscale so as to not take away from the colors and palettes that users create and share on the site.

    @K.Kaviraj: Because COLOURlovers isn’t just a color picker. It is a showcase of color combinations from thousands of people around the world.

    @teki321: As mentioned by Tim below, it is easy to copy a successful site & idea… and Kuler had great inspiration ;)

    P.S. http://picks.yahoo.com/picks/i/20070611.html gives a good starting point for how to test COLOURlovers out and figure out where you might find the best inspiration on the site.

  17. Pierre Col

    July 6th, 2007 at 8:58 am

    A funny feature : if you are the first one to submit a color in a palette, you can name it :-)

    Welcome to “UbicMedia orange” and “PUMit blue” :-))

    http://www.colourlovers.com/lover/Pierre%20Col

  18. Lance Fisher

    July 6th, 2007 at 9:32 am

    I’ve been registerd over at ColourLovers for a while. It really is a cool site, and fills a space where there aren’t many others. They also run a great blog http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/ where they often talk about different color inspirations. Several of the posts have ended up on the front page of Digg. My only complaint is that the color site can get slow sometimes. Probably due to growth. It’s great to see them covered here.

  19. Tim

    July 6th, 2007 at 10:44 am

    This site is cool. I just went and added the colors from my new site, iRent2u.com. The neat thing was that since all of the colors were new to the database I was able to name them whatever I wanted, just as Pierre mentioned.

    I named each color iRent2u 1, iRent2u 2, etc… and then named the whole palette iRent2u.com

    Maybe I’ll get some SEO traffic off my name. =^) Probably not, but fun anyway.

    Check out my sites colors here http://www.colourlovers.com/pa.....Rent2u.com

  20. dave

    July 6th, 2007 at 11:00 am

    dude (above) it is NOT a stupid idea…in fact, i think there’s a great need for a color palette sharing tool, very useful for browser testing and all of that…

    personally, i really like the offering from adobe, called “kuler” - and for mac users, they have a cool widget that pulls up the current color streams with feedback, and of course full hexidecimal code options to pull into apps for design…

    another cool one is colorsphere…

  21. Travis

    July 6th, 2007 at 11:20 am

    I have been a long time registered member of CL, and frankly the effort put in to building this amazing little community is totally commendable. It’s clever, fun, and increasingly more useful.

    Most designers I know get hooked immediately, and I have heard negative comments like the one’s above before, but almost exclusively from non artists.

    Obviously some people are going to wonder what the heck is the big deal about sharing colors

  22. Travis

    July 6th, 2007 at 11:22 am

    Whoops, got cut off. Anyway, I see the point of view for those who are simply disinterested - but don’t knock the site just because it isn’t the niche you are fanatical about. For those who do Love Color, this site is a really fascinating community to interact with - and the proof is in it’s popularity.

  23. DW

    July 6th, 2007 at 11:36 am

    Great site!!!

    Consider me an insider but I happen to know the developer who built the site. In fact, he’s worked for me on a freelance basis for almost a year now developing some other very cool sites and applications.

    Great job Chris! Keep up the great work!

  24. WTF

    July 6th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    The world has gone f-ing crazy. I think this and iPhones are clearly signs of the apocalypse. Steve Jobs must have a 6-6-6 on his skull some where. The 12 galaxies guy was on target all along.

  25. Nemrut

    July 6th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    ..interesting site. among hardcore musicians/composers, music is often described in terms of color variations. it would be interested to see people post color palattes based on specific songs/scores.

  26. electrikmonk

    July 6th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    I’ve been a longtime member, and I think the site is about more than just colo(u)r. I constantly find inspiration and creative points of view there that I would have never considered before. Cheers to Darius for a great idea and more so for bringing it to life.

  27. neil blecherman

    July 6th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

    I’ve been playing around with http://www.kuler.com for a while and am a big fan. Very clean design using Adobe AIR (Apollo), the color wheel helps coordinate the color palette and social networking revolves around artists (which I am not), their work and the design tools they use. At first glance, colourlovers looks like it has a similar target audience but different features.

  28. Jay (living in First Life)

    July 6th, 2007 at 3:28 pm

    Yawn.

  29. Darius A Monsef IV

    July 6th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

    @Neil

    I suppose it is time I put my thoughts out there on the Kuler matter:
    http://www.colourlovers.com/bl.....ourlovers/

  30. Chad

    July 6th, 2007 at 5:15 pm

    I’ve actually used colourlovers to get a palette for a site I designed. It worked out quite well, much easier than my typical tinkering with the swatch in photoshop.

  31. G

    July 6th, 2007 at 6:58 pm

    I like this community although it doesn’t feel like one really.

  32. Pierre Col

    July 6th, 2007 at 10:35 pm

    @Darius

    I’ve read your long post about Adobe Kuler… and for me it is clear : Adobe simply decided to copy your site, I agree with your point of view and you have my support.

    A big advantage of your COLOURlovers site vs Kuler site : being made in plain satndard HTML, your site allow direct links to palettes, colors and coulourlovers, like for instance myhttp://www.colourlovers.com/palette/93423/UbicMedia

    Being made in Flash/AIR or whatever Adobe proprietary technology, Kuler does not allow it… and that does not facilitate the sharing of palettes and colors!

  33. Paddy Duke

    July 9th, 2007 at 7:17 pm

    I’m an old school COLOURlovers user and an aquaintance of Darius. I much prefer CL to kuler, which I always pronounced ‘cooler’ (There should be two ‘L’s, Adobe!)

    COLOURlovers is a great site and a very useful resource for designers. I encourage even the skeptics to check it out.

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