While creating a postcard design, an essential aspect is adding colors. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to choose color harmony rules on Adobe Color, fetch hex codes, and implement them into your design in Adobe Illustrator.
Key Insights
- The article provides a detailed instruction on how to use Adobe Color to choose colors for a postcard design. It suggests using Adobe Color's color wheel and color harmony rules to select and adjust colors.
- To apply the selected color into the design on Adobe Illustrator, it is advised to copy the hex code of each color from Adobe Color and paste it into Illustrator. Hex codes are universal codes used to designate specific colors across all platforms.
- The article goes further to demonstrate the process of creating a series of squares in Illustrator to contain the selected colors. This method helps to keep the colors within easy reach and saves time as you won't need to consistently revert to Adobe Color.
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In this video, we'll be working with colors. While we currently have our postcard set up, it's right now only in black and white.
So, let's begin adding some colors. To do this, we're going to work with another Adobe resource to choose our colors. So, let's open up a web browser, and in the address bar, type color.adobe.com and hit ENTER.
From here, we'll be working with Adobe Color.
As we can see in the middle, we have a color wheel where we can click and drag to interact with different colors.
On the left-hand side, if we choose different color harmony rules, we'll see that as we click and drag, we get different options.
With these options, we get different colors, and below that, we have the hex code signifying the specific color that's been chosen.
Hex codes are used across all platforms to designate certain colors. By clicking and dragging on the color wheel, this will automatically change, keeping all the colors within our selected harmony rules.
In this case, we can choose whichever color harmony rule we'd like for our postcard.
For our preview, I used compound colors, and for my example, I'll use the compound color harmony rule.
However, feel free to choose whichever one you prefer. I'll select 'Compound, ' and from here, I'm going to choose a set of colors that I feel is appropriate.
I'll make a few changes, and I'll stick with this set of colors.
To bring this into Illustrator, I'll need to copy the hex codes and paste them into Illustrator.
To do this, I'll double-click the hex code, selecting only the numbers and letters, and hit CTRL + C on my keyboard.
Then, I'll go back into Illustrator, and now we need to place this color somewhere.
I find it's easiest to create a series of squares to contain these colors.
To do this, let's first start a new layer by clicking the 'New Layer' icon, double-clicking it, and typing 'Colors.' Then hit ENTER.
Because we're using this for both sides of our postcard, we don't need to specify whether it's for the front or back.
In addition, let's use the Hand Tool (shortcut H on the keyboard) to drag our perspective over so we can place our colors right in the middle.
Next, with 'Colors' selected, let's use the Rectangle Tool to create five squares to contain these colors.
To do this, we'll simply click and drag to create a square, and for this square, we'll select the stroke and set it to 'None.'
From here, we'll make sure that our Fill color is on top, and we can double-click the Fill, then hit CTRL + V to paste the color we've selected from Adobe Color.
If we click OK, we'll see that the color now reflects the one we selected from our first color.
Let's now copy our second one by double-clicking the hex code, hitting CTRL + C, and going back into Illustrator, where we'll create an additional square.
To do this, we'll hit CTRL + Shift + A to deselect, then hit V on the keyboard for our Selection Tool. We'll hold ALT, click, and drag to create the second square.
We now have our five squares. We just need to assign the colors.
So, let's now click the second color, then double-click the Fill.
From here, we can go to the bottom, with our hex code selected, hit CTRL + V, and click OK.
We'll go back into our web browser, double-click the third one, hit CTRL + C, and go back into Illustrator. We'll hit CTRL + Shift + A to deselect the second square, and selecting the third square, we'll double-click the Fill, hit CTRL + V to paste our third hex code, and click OK.
Then, we'll select our fourth square, go back into our web browser, double-click the hex code of our fourth color, hit CTRL + C, go back into Illustrator, double-click the Fill, hit CTRL + V, and click OK.
Finally, for our fifth and final color, we'll go into our web browser, double-click, and hit CTRL + C. Then, going to Illustrator, with this square highlighted, we'll double-click the Fill, hit CTRL + V, and click OK.
While this may be a little difficult at first, I find it's helpful to have these squares here so we don't have to consistently go back to our web browser to check the color.
Let's now save our work by hitting CTRL + S on the keyboard, and in the next video, we'll use these colors to assign them to text.
See you there!