WK10 Tone and Color

TONE
This is the gameinformer.com website front page. The website itself uses high contrast themes and well organized layouts. The logo itself is in a dark grey (not black), with a light blue accent. The current website as of November 3rd 2011, uses shades of grey in the main task bar--these are examples of usages of tones. The three main and most popular sections--News, Reviews, and Previews-- are highlighted in a midtone dark grey, and to the left of it is the "Platforms" tag (that lists the current electronic gaming consoles) which is highlighted in a lighter shade of grey. The rest of the bar is in a really dark shade of grey, which looks almost black (according to Photoshop, the color hex is #181512, not #000000 black). This subtle grey-black makes the website seemingly sophisticated because of the usage of a complex grey color than just straight black. The main text is also not in black, and uses a dark shade of grey; the text is still legible but again, makes a subtle difference of sophistication than typical black text on white background. The feature article is boxed in a light grey which complements the dark grey text and allows the text to still be seen. The bar at the very top with the "Join" and "Sign in" links is also not completely black; although it has a black base, it has a subtle grey pattern over it; this pattern makes the site look more "tech-savvy". The usage of black is mostly avoided in this front page.

COLOR
This minimalism-like theme uses accents of color (other than the images used). Links are highlighted in blue, the "more" links are boxed in blue with white text. There aren't any colors than the single shade of bright sky blue except for the single link for the "Home" tab, which is highlighted in the opposite color bright orange. This blue accent corresponds to the blue accent on the "i" of the gameinformer logo. The usage of this color is to catch your eye; the blue is used on tabs on feature articles, arrows for drop-down menus, and the hyperlinks as stated before. This usage of single colors is to catch your eye, to mean progression through the website, and transport the user from page to page via these little blue links.