A Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing

Since I can’t access colourlovers.com from work, I tried kuler.adobe.com today. You can navigate to the Newest, Most Popular, and Highest Rated “themes,” or let the site bring one up at Random. You can limit it to themes created in the last 7 days, 30 days, or infinity. Above the navigation is a search box. (I will try to upload screenshots of these later.)

Unfortunately, the site bothers me too much to really use it as a tool. Here’s why:

1. The code for the colors in each theme aren’t listed.
   Say what?! Here’s a site all about combining colors, intended for designers, and I can’t even figure out where the code for each color is listed. No CMYK numbers, no RGB numbers, not even HTML hex. Maybe if I click on the color itself? Nope, that just makes the a swatch- er, theme bigger. Is it kept under “more info?” Nope, that’s just how many stars it’s rated and when it was created.

   I finally found this info through an icon looks like a set of sliding adjustments (again, I’ll try to get screenshots up here after work). I initially dismissed that icon while I was hunting because hovering over it brought up the text “Make changes to this theme in the Create window.” Well hey, I wasn’t trying to make changes. I’m not even registered. I was just trying to get the info on that exact color. I didn’t think I had a use for that option at all. But lo and behold, clicking the icon revealed all the colors controls I could want: a color wheel where I can click and drag to other hues, sliders to do the same thing, and numbers in HSV, CMYK, RGB, Lab, and Hex.

   So I was finally able to see the numbers of the color set I liked, but I did so in a round-about way. Most importantly, to my designer’s sensibilities, even though I did find the numbers, I did it using a tool not intended for that purpose. I still haven’t found out where I should have gone to find them, or if the site’s creators intended to make it available at all.

2. It’s all in Flash.
   This wasn’t a problem until I clicked in what I thought was a blank space and was sent to a user’s profile instead. I guess the area around the author’s byline for each palette is bigger than it would seem. But this left me with a dilemma. I had been browsing the most popular palettes — excuse me, themes – and there was one that I had not yet visited when I accidentally moved away from the list. But you can’t go back, at least not easily. Can’t use the Back button on the browser. No “previous page” or “back to browsing” function in the Flash. To get there, I’d have to follow my tracks from the beginning: choose the Most Popular and start flipping through the list. I don’t even remember where in the list I saw the swatch which was now eluding me. In the end, this was too irritating and I didn’t bother trying.

3. Lack of color proportion.
   Creating a set of five colors is all well and good, but kuler doesn’t seem to let you specify the proportion of one color to another. This severely limits its usefulness, and leads me to gripe #3.

4. Calling them “themes.”
   To me, a theme would show you the proportions of one color to another — in other words, how much of each color to use in your creation. The amount of one color in relation to another affects how they interact and lends character to a creation.

   For example, the colors of Barnes & Noble’s site might include medium green, warm gray, khaki, warm sand and dusty teal. (My description of the colors, anyway.) Simply showing you those colors in five equally-sized squares does not give you an idea of the theme for the B&N site. The proportion of green to khaki and gray to teal, etc., is necessary to a theme.

5. The name “kuler.”
   I suppose they were being “web 2.0.” Talk about an epic fail. Every time I see the name, my brain instantly pronounces it “cooler.” I guess “kuller” would have been too close to “killer” or “culler.” But even if the fine point of how spelling guides pronunciation doesn’t bother you, maybe IM-speak does, and “kul” in texting or instant messaging means “cool.” So I’m back to hearing “cooler” again.

6. The navigation is limiting and confusing.
   As I mentioned at the top of this post, the main navigation lets you view “themes” by Newest, Most Popular, and Highest Rated, or let the site bring one up at Random. You can limit it to themes created in the last 7 days, 30 days, or infinity.

   First question: what’s the difference between “Most Popular” and “Highest Rated?” Sounds like the same thing to me. Unless they only let registered users rate the themes, in which case “Highest Rated” themes have the most stars as given by registered users, whereas “Most Popular” themes are the ones visited most by registered and unregistered users alike. Or maybe Most Popular have the most comments. Talk about splitting hairs. Besides, wouldn’t it be more valuable to know which ones are well-liked by a broad range of visitors? Otherwise it’s a bunch of designers patting each other on the back for good ones and flaming the bad ones without any real world application.

   I was expecting more options, like being able to browse by categories based on the colors (e.g., bright, muted), their intended use (e.g., corporate, formal, wedding), or even by mood or impression (e.g., elegant, positive, clean, earthy). Alas, no such thing exists. Closest you can get is to search for one of those terms. The search seems to rely on both the name of theme and the keywords (tags) added by users. On the one hand, tagging can be a grand way to let users help themselves find things by tagging it more appropriately than the keywords a bunch of corporate monkeys might come up with.

   But the tagging system is just not working here. A brief example: I searched with the words “corporate blue” and was given only 10 results. Just 10 out of the tens of thousands of possibilities. Many of the themes I browsed to were tagged poorly or the tags were obviously created by someone who didn’t know how to enter them (creating a big phrase instead of individual tag words, for example). In light of this, maybe it was asking too much to expect color-happy folks to name their collections well. It would have been much, much better if Adobe had taken the best of both worlds and allowed users to both add tags and place themes in categories.

So there you have it. Why I don’t - and won’t - use kuler.