I recently came across a useful color guide produced by Simplicable while working on a few projects that required me to choose aesthetic colors. Because I found the resource useful, I decided to share the Simplicable Color Guide with New Leaf Journal readers.
What Is Simplicable?
Simplicable describes itself as “a modern encyclopedia that has been updated daily since 2003.” It has content in a large number of categories. On first impression, much of the content seems to be in what I would describe as informational listicles. I have only looked closely at the color guide, and that is what I will focus on in this article.
The Simplicable Color Guide
One of Simplicable’s sections is a color guide. The guide states that it has 250 different types of color.
After a brief introduction, the color guide goes straight to showing colors. On the homepage, colors are organized into the following categories:
- Red
- Blue
- Green
- Brown
- Yellow
- Orange
- Pink
- Purple
- White
- Grey
- Black
One reason that Simplicable is color guide is useful because it displays colors in a clear and intuitive way. Individual colors are displayed in rectangular boxes filled in with the color in question. Overlaying the color is text showing the name of the color and the color’s six-character hex code.
A bit more digging reveals that Simplicable has a number of other color lists that break colors down into more specific categories. The Named Colors page has many color lists that are fine-tuned by narrow colors or by themes. For example, the celadon list contains seven shades of celadon while the Japanese colors list has 190 colors in total.
There are a few additional broad lists that some may find useful. 202 Examples of Well-Known Colors comes as advertised, although its alphabetical sorting is not optimal. The same can be said of its RGB Color Codes list, which lists 220 colors with RGB codes instead of hex codes (note hex codes can be easily converted into RGB codes for programs that require RGB).
Final Thoughts
I happened across the Simplicable Color Guide by chance while looking for a particular color. While the Simplicable site as a whole has quite a bit going on, its section on colors is intuitive and easy to navigate. It displays colors and their hex codes clearly, has a terrific selection of colors, and also has a large number of color category pages to make it easy for visitors to search for colors within narrow categories. If you are looking for color ideas for a project, I recommend giving the Simplicable color guide a look to see if you find it helpful.