Assorted Afflatuses

For every one aesthetically-pleasing website on the Internet, there are at least twelve-thousand hideous websites languishing languidly in the digital detritus. And on those hideous websites the most common design flaw is not the inappropriate use of clipart or a nonsensical navigation system. Rather, the people who design repellant websites simply cannot choose a harmonious pallet of colors. Fortunately, Adobe has partly solved this problem with their latest online design tool, called "Kuler."

Kuler allows anyone, including artists and creative professionals, to create and share five-color pallets that can be used in web, print or video projects. Think Flickr for colors. You can search Kuler's library of color pallets based on primary color or even based on tags or themes assigned to the color combinations by the pallet's author. Then, once you've discovered a suitable set of hues, you can either cut out the hexidecimal color values or even download a Creative Suite compatible swatch file. It's one of the most amazing online tools I have ever used.

Of course, even with thousands of pallets in their database, Kuler may not have what you want. So, should you want submit your own set of colors, Kuler's "Create" interface has a number of tools that help users follow basic rules of color harmony, which should put everyone on the path to color-based enlightenment.

Pay Kuler a visit. It's pretty great.