Hello,
Back to design today, finally. I’m pretty happy I could get back into designing my map, and tacking what I've been' putting off for a while, the color. So far I’ve just been putting random colors and not caring too much about shading. The thought of finding a color pattern and actually sticking to it seemed quite daunting. However, having settled on a color pattern and look, I’m stoked!
Color Patterns
coolors is where I created and saved my patterns. The UI is super quick and simple to move colors around, create new colors either between or after your current swatches, and export settings to quickly create custom CSS variables. I’m also thrilled about the simple design where you can just click and copy the color, for quick and easy implementation of your new swatch. There are also settings to play with hue, saturation, contrast, and brightness. I’m quite a fan of it and used it combination with colorhunt for pattern inspiration, and mycolor for compatible color generation. For as essential and important color is to any design, I’ll go over a few other reflections I have about creating this image.
Design Reflections
I like things to be aligned. I feel gross drawing outside the lines the same way when an achor point is not aligned with the grid. Making this isometric map has me up the wall at times trying to make everything pixel perfect. I’m not ready to delve into the cold unregulated world of free form aligning with grid turned off. But at the same time, it can be the most infuriating thing to be constrained by. Despite this, I’m trying to have some form of consistency in my image. The same rounding in the corners, isometric angle, and grid conformity. What I mean is that I’m sizing everything according to the isometric grid I have overlaying the map. But it’s a fine line in art, between conformity and wonder, to explore outside the grid and see what’s out there. I miss Illustrators ability to move along specified lines. To easily select anchors and align things perfectly. But it’s possible as well that I’m just inexperienced with Figma, which I truly am, and I have yet to discover these tricks. I’m determined to learn, and to maintain consistency and beauty in my little world.
Really happy to have delved back into design today. I understand I’m not using Figma’s component and prototyping functionality, and it’s currently just an Illustrator type tool for creating vector images, but I’ll take this project as a first step in just dipping my toes into using Figma in general. I’m sure in the future I’ll play with it’s many features. However, today was great, glad to have color out of the way. Thank you for joining today, I’ll be back tomorrow.