Post the Colors

You know the color "burnt sienna"? Well, I wondered what plain old "sienna" was. A coworker poked around the internet and came up with a mention of "raw sienna" color. Hmm ... is "raw" sienna the same as plain sienna? Not that's it's really important, you understand, but I have a natural curiosity.

It turns out that sienna is a type of clay that's yelow-brown in color. When it's fired (burnt), it looks like the color burnt sienna. Here's the Webster's definition (annoyance: a pop-up ad appears on the Websters site). OK, so why even bring it up? Well, in addition to it being interesting in its own right, it's a segue into colors in general.

The Pantone site has a series of color pallettes that they say represents popular colors different periods in recent American History -- "40 Years of Color". You might try using these colors and see how they work together to set a visual "tone" for a page. You'll notice that these are not specifically grouped to be an all-inclusive web pallette. You'd a better range of contrast. But these groupings of four could be a great start to developing a pallete for your web site. You do have one, don't you?