It's New Year's Eve and my birthday so I will make this a quickie – I am sure you understand…
I've just come across a very handy tool if you're looking for a colourful inspiration for any design or art project you might have collecting dust in a neglected folder somewhere on your drive.
There are plenty of the usual type of colour picker sites out there, perhaps the best being www.colourlovers.com which features a massive library of potential swatches, however here's a more radical, less traditional alternative, which essentially chooses Flickr images by their predominant range of hues. It's offered by Idée Labs and is snazzily titled the Multicolour Search Labs.
The application is very simple – take a look…
So as you can see to the left is a grid of blank thumbnails, on the right is a pallete of coloured swatches. For example if you picked a subdued shade of red you'll get results something like this:
As you'd expect the choices, however abundant, make up some rather dull, mainly textural examples of photography, graphic design, and art. However when you begin to add further colours the full potential of this remarkable Flickr search tool begins to kick in!
As you can now see, not only do the contrasting colours make for a selection of higher impact imagery, but you can start to see how this particular partnership of hues works in the real world. Whatever your idea, I am sure you can apply the same principle to your own working practice. Take a look at three colours:
Anyway try out the Multicolour Search tool yourself, it's a great inspirational tool and a lot of fun too!
Happy New Year 
Super cool! I didn’t know this existed. Happy belated birthday!
Thanks Jane