03 Pick the palette before you pick colours
Why every colour on gantry.world comes from 250 traditional Japanese colours.
Picking colours one at a time is how palettes turn to mush. For this site I did the opposite: every colour had to come from one fixed set of 250 traditional Japanese colours, each with its own name.
Six very different designs drew from that set, and they still looked like one brand. Names help too. "SYOJYOHI" is easier to remember and talk about than "#E83015", and it comes with a story.
To do the same:
- Start from a fixed set. Traditional colours, an ink guide or your brand book, not the whole colour wheel.
- Give every colour a job. Background, text, and one colour that points at what matters.
- Check contrast on the real text pairs. A pretty pair isn't always a readable one.
I turned the set into a tool so you can work this way too.