'In this paper a novel optical illusion is described in which purple structures (dots) are perceived as purple at the point of fixation, while the surrounding structures (dots) of the same purple colour are perceived toward a blue hue.'
Designed by artists and designers from across the globe, each wallpaper comes in a variety of screen resolutions and can be downloaded for free. A huge thank-you to everyone who shared their designs with us - this post wouldn't be possible without your kind support!
Static images don't show motion. You can't inspect real product structure. You don't see how interfaces evolve over time. You rarely understand what actually works in production. So I decided to go deep. I reviewed every major design reference platform I could find - not just the popular ones - and analyzed how they actually help in real-world work. The conclusion?
From Do Ho Suh's ethereal architecture to Kimsooja's irridescent mirrors to Lauren Halsey's fringed tapestry, a new book from Monacelli celebrates a broad spectrum of light and color. Rainbow Dreams features more than 200 installations, sculptures, paintings, photographs, and more that revel in the possibilities of pigment. Bound in a smooth gradient that extends to the pages' edges, this vivid survey is a celebratory, playful object in itself.
The latter feature is aptly called "Coloring book," and lets you make blank coloring templates in version 11.2512.191.0 of Paint based on a text prompt. Users can access this feature by selecting the Coloring book option from the Copilot menu in Paint, and then describing what the design should be, such as "a cute fluffy cat on a donut." Paint will then generate four results that Paint users can click to add to their canvas. From there, you can presumably use Paint itself to color the image, or print it out to use traditional art materials.
There have been a few drafts of a specification function for this functionality, most recently, contrast-color() (formerly color-contrast()) in the CSS Color Module Level 5 draft. But with Safari and Firefox being the only browsers that have implemented it so far, the final version of this functionality is likely still a ways off. There has been a lot of functionality added to CSS in the meantime; enough that I wanted to see whether we could implement it in a cross-browser friendly way today. Here's what I have: color: oklch(from <your color> round(1.21 - L) 0 0);
One predictable pain point with contrast-color() is that it only returns black and white named colors. From a design systems perspective, that's not ideal because you want your colors. You want your harmonious brand and the colors you and your team spent thousands of man hours in meetings deciding on. Those colors. In fact, an earlier version of Safari had color-contrast() (confusing I know, naming is hard) which allowed you to pass in a list of best candidates to choose from. I beleive that proposal got mired in standards discussions, color contrast algorithms, and competing proposals; and contrast-color() is what survived which got simplified down to a binary result.
Its newest, though, is a single-fan book with more than 600 spot colors, and it's priced at just $99. Pantone for beginners. Pantone on Thursday announced its Pantone Capsule: Signature Edition. Housed in a collectible, cylindrical case that wouldn't look out of place in a Sephora, the guide is a sort of Pantone 101 that come on coated and uncoated paper stock with colors selected from across more than 60 years of Pantone history.