Something to Make Life Easier: Geekery Warning
I finally buckled down to buy a web hosting service capable of holding my professional website. I don't require a lot with it, but I wanted room for expansion for a good price. After much soul searching and research I settled on Site Grounds. I think I will be very happy with this host as it offers quite a lot of about $60 a year including my own domain. Yeah I have a .com now!
Anyway, in the process of getting my business site rolling, I have run across some major issues. Color was a big deal because I already have business cards and of course would implement that. Problem is, the colors are very pastel and that would not work for a corporate site. So I settled somewhere in the middle with colors of blue as the dominant hue and purples and golds to highlight. More of a lower saturation to remove any pastel signs.
I found this neat site in my ventures through Cyberspace today. You can plug 2 colors in: what would be the background and foreground colors and get feedback on whether they have enough contrast to be readable on the web. Come to find, my text was too light. So I went into Photoshop and picked some darker tones until the formula said the contrast was sufficient. This is a great little tool for all designers out there who design for the web. You can get a good idea of what colors work well and which ones don't. For instance I have a light blue background with a slightly darker blue for the text. I had to go to a dark grey for all to be sufficient. It didn't change the goal of the site which is good. It enhanced it far from what I would have guessed and no one needs to feel blind!
Enjoy the little tool: http://juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.php#result