INSPIRING STORIES
Find Inspiration in Colours
What colour are the clouds? You might want to answer “grey,” but what kind of grey? The longer you look at them, the more shades you’ll see.
To find the words to describe them and harness any inspiration you might get from them, here are two apps that will help you see the world in more colours than ever before.
A Rainbow in Grey
In Japanese, there are dozens of different kinds of grey. There’s the purple-grey sakuranezumi (cherry blossom mouse), green-tinted yanaginezumi (willow grey), brownish hatobanezumi (dove feather grey), and blue-grey ainezumi (indigo mouse), to name a few. These colours aren’t only uniquely named, but are also important to Japanese art and calligraphy.
To know your greys, browns, and every shade in Japanese art, check out Nippon Colors. It catalogues all these distinct hues, as well as their RGB, CMYK, and hexadecimal colour codes, so you can easily incorporate the colours you like into your own designs.
A Colour Palette From Nature
Inspired by the colours of the sky to create some art of your own? Open Adobe Capture and point your camera at the sky; the app will generate a colour palette based on the scenery.
Tip: Contrast the subtle colours of the clouds with pops of colour from the environment. This will create a balanced and completely unique colour palette, capturing the essence of the scenes that inspired you.
The next time the weather’s getting you down, look up at the sky and be inspired by the whole spectrum of colours that you see.