Express (and Remember) your Colors with Pastel
I’m thinking about color and design aesthetics these days, both for this website and other projects I’m working on. I know. It’s pretty monochromatic here right now, which is why I want to be able to put together some colors and keep track of the combos that I like. So I searched the App Store and found Pastel. After using it for a few days, I can tell it’s what I need.
What is Pastel?
From the developer, Steve Troughton-Smith on the App Store:
Pastel is an app for amateur developers & artists (like us!) that lets you build up a library of color palettes for your projects.
Pastel is free to download, with the ability to unlock unlimited palettes for a one-time fee. It is available on the iPad, iPhone, and Mac.
What does it do best?
Pastel comes with a bunch of colors and reference palettes included. Then, there’s the option to pull colors from different style pickers and save them to create new custom palettes. The creativity goes a step further by allowing the user to import a photo, and it will pull a palette of complementary colors. It works really well and is a fun feature to play with!
Palettes can be exported as wallpaper to beautify your home screen or watch face, as a color swatch featuring hex colors, or you can send it directly to Procreate for your design work.
Pastel is free to download, with the ability to unlock unlimited palettes for a one-time fee. It is available on the iPad, iPhone, and Mac.
How is it useful?
Pastel helps manage colors, which is useful for many projects, including websites, presentations, book and print media design, and even for pulling colors together for ideas around the house. It’s perfect for what I need because it’s not overly complicated yet still allows me to play with different ideas and take inspiration from the included palettes.
If you are working on a Keynote or slide deck that isn’t constrained by a corporate or institutional stylebook and want to make it stand out, Pastel is an excellent place to start experimenting with colors.