The Dream Scheme

It is my dream to build a color scheme membership platform. Let's explore where the idea came from, the progress that has been made so far, and what the future could hold.

Idea Conception

Throughout my time in design school, I took a liking to color schemes. I would frequently create palettes that could be used in my design projects. Often these schemes would make their way into website designs, print, and marketing.

I found that making color schemes can be a beautiful and refreshing activity. Often times I would walk around a new place, take photos of colorful scenes, and eye-drop colors out of them that worked together. It makes for a great excuse to go explore somewhere new.

I had so much fun making the color schemes that I wished there was a way to share them with fellow designers and artists. It was only during my fourth and final year in school I made an initial approach to sharing my creations in a fun and tasteful way.

Once a month I would put color schemes in a saddle-stitched book and leave them around the classrooms, hoping that other students would pick them up and use them. To my liking, they were enjoyed and appreciated.

After leaving school and obtaining my degree, I revisited the idea of sharing color schemes again, but this time with the intention of capturing a worldwide audience.

Progress Made Today

Color Scheme Creation

The first step in building my color empire was to make a library of beautiful, functional, and unique color schemes. I created a series of 5-color palettes in Adobe Illustrator. Each palette was pulled out of photographs I had taken at local gardens, on hikes, and throughout different parts of my city. Each color was arranged and modified to work well together as a palette. The theme of each color scheme would constantly change, from monochromatic to analogous, and even to fully custom.

Today there are over 100 color schemes in my arsenal.

Color Collective Blog

Next, I had to place my color creations on the web. I decided that a blog would be the best option to showcase the palettes. A blog could include written descriptions about the schemes and downloadable hexadecimal codes, therefore making it the optimal choice. My blog host of choice was Blogger.com for its simple and easy-to-use content management system.

Each color scheme on the blog was given its own page. It was crucial for each page to be crafted using keywords, descriptive text, and alt tags for the images to ensure that SEO would deliver free organic traffic to me.

After my Color Collective blog was created, it was time to move over to social media. If you want to check out the blog, please click here

Social Media Funnels

I'll begin this section by saying that Instagram was not my ideal choice for sharing color schemes due to its short post lifespan and tedious upkeep. Rather, I wanted longevity for whatever posts were promoting my color schemes and blog. That is why Pinterest was the way to go. Pinterest pins don't drop dead in views after a 48-hour window but have the potential to gain continuous traction over many months and years

Tests and Traffic Monitoring

Through several pin AB tests on Pinterest with different images, keywords and descriptions, I was able to secure steady traffic and impression counts of at least 10,000 monthly views per pin for over two years. Some color scheme pins even reached over 100,000 monthly views and thousands of clicks through to the blog. The Pinterest board can be found here

Currently, my Color Collective blog receives over 1,000 unique visitors per month.

Merchandise & Monetization

I promised myself that if my color schemes became popular that I would never place ads on my blog. Why? Because ads are very annoying and disrupt the flow of the content.

I knew that there had to be some way to secure a less spammy form of income from the blog. That's when I thought of creating merchandise. I figured that I could make some fun and cute products using my own color schemes. In order to achieve this, I opened a print-on-demand collection, published some colorful designs, and attached links on the blog.

Tomorrow's Dream

A Membership Program

The next step for my color scheme empire would be to create a membership program with a partner like Memberful.

In a perfect world, members would be able to receive monthly color scheme libraries, books, stories, and merchandise. It is my dream to one day see one of my color schemes used in an international brand, or notice someone drinking tea out of a Color Collective mug.

For now, I'll keep making color schemes, growing my audience, and look towards the future!