Colors: Make Your Page Happy, Make Your Page Sad
You can mess around with layouts all you want, but what people will remember about your page is the color. The color could come from the backgrounds of elements or the color of fonts. Or the colors could come from the use of photos, images, graphics, and backgrounds. With the use of all white pages, color can even be ruthlessly suppressed, so as not to make a page overly busy or distract from photos.
Figure 9-20. Fixed/flexible page layout design, compressed until the minimum width is reached for the main element
There's more to the issue of color than what you like and don't like. I mentioned in Chapter 1 the hamster wheel and the overuse of color, which can make it more trash than treasure. Color can also make text hard to read, or even induce a headache in your web page visitors—not something I recommend if you want your site to be popular.
Color can also cheer people up, create a somber, serious mood, or send site visitors on a soothing quest through blue-green waves of contemplation. Thinking funky and fun? Bright, primary colors can stage the feel of a site before a person clicks even one link or reads one word. Into goth? Black and red. Into babies? Pastels rule. How about seasonal page looks? Coppery reds and yellow work for fall, and red and green or white and blue seem to be universal for winter, at least in my culture.
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