Creativity Exercise - week 2

 

Hey y’all, welcome back to another weekly blog. For this week’s creativity exercise, I wanted to dive into something that’s been on my mind a lot lately: color and mood. The exercise goes like this: pick five different moods and create unique color palettes for each one. The catch? Don’t just stick to the obvious stuff like “happy” or “sad.” Instead, push into more complex, layered moods and see how colors can bring them to life.

Color palettes are one of those tools that can completely transform the feel of a design. They tell stories without words, and they set the emotional tone before a viewer even has time to think. With the help of ChatGPT, my very good friend, I was able to pick out some great mood selections to create color palettes. So here’s what we came up with:

1. Nostalgic Melancholy
Palette: Dusty rose, sepia brown, faded teal, cream, muted gray.
This one is all about that bittersweet feeling when a memory is warm but also heavy. Think of old photographs that make you smile and ache at the same time.

2. Chaotic Excitement
Palette: Electric orange, neon green, magenta, cobalt blue, stark white.
Loud, clashing, and impossible to ignore, this mood is pure energy, the kind that feels messy but still fun. 

3. Quiet Resilience
Palette: Deep forest green, charcoal, warm sand, muted gold, soft navy.
This palette isn’t loud, but it’s strong. It carries that calm confidence of something weathered by storms but still standing tall.

4. Playful Curiosity
Palette: Bubblegum pink, lemon yellow, sky blue, lavender, mint green.
Lighthearted and exploratory, these colors are about seeing the world with fresh eyes, ready to poke at new ideas and have fun with them.

5. Unsettling Mystery
Palette: Midnight purple, deep burgundy, smoke gray, black, glimmering silver.
This one leans into the eerie side of things, where you’re intrigued but also a little on edge. Perfect for stories or visuals that thrive on suspense.

Here's a visual look at the color palette if you are a more visual learner:


Doing this exercise really brought out a lot of different ways to use color, cause sometimes we think of color as a one-dimensional type of thing, but what it really is a complex multidimensional object with way too many ways to think, use, and structure your designs, thoughts, and basic subject matter around.  This little exercise is a great way to stretch your design thinking and also build palettes that could come in handy for future projects.

 

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