The background of this website isn't white. I want to be very specific about that, because the difference matters more than you would think. The background is #FAFAF7. That isn't white. That is warm paper. It's the colour of a notebook you've been carrying around for a while, the pages slightly aged, slightly warm, slightly lived-in. The difference between #FAFAF7 and pure white (#FFFFFF) is three hex values. Three tiny numbers. And it changes absolutely everything about how this site feels.
Most people will never notice. That's entirely the point. Good colour decisions are invisible. They work on you subconsciously, shaping how you feel about what you're looking at before your brain has a chance to analyse why. You don't think "ah, this background has a warm tone that makes me feel comfortable." You just feel comfortable. You don't think "this accent colour creates a sense of energy." You just feel energised. The colour is doing its work silently, underneath the content, underneath the words, underneath everything you consciously process.
Bad colour choices, on the other hand, are impossible to miss. A jarring colour scheme screams at you. A poorly chosen accent colour creates a sense of unease you can't quite place. A pure white background feels clinical, sterile, slightly aggressive - like being in a hospital waiting room. You notice bad colour the way you notice a bad smell. It's immediate, visceral, and it colours everything else about the experience.
Four colours, four feelings
Across everything I build, I use four accent colours. Not five, not ten, not a rainbow of options that change depending on my mood. Four. Each one chosen for a specific reason, each one carrying a specific emotional weight.
Red (#E84855) is energy. It's the colour that draws your eye, that creates urgency, that says "pay attention to this." I use it for progress bars, for important highlights, for pull-quote borders, for the moments where I want you to feel something with a bit of force. It isn't a corporate red - it's warmer than that, with a hint of coral that stops it from feeling aggressive. It's the difference between a stop sign and a sunset. Same colour family, completely different feeling.
Purple (#7C3AED) is creativity. It's the colour of things that are a bit different, a bit unexpected, a bit playful. I use it for interactive elements, for reactions, for the moments where something is inviting you to engage rather than just read. Purple has always been the colour of originality - it's the rarest colour in nature, which is why it has historically been associated with royalty, with the unusual, with things that stand apart. In my palette, it's the colour that says "this isn't the ordinary part."
Amber (#D97706) is warmth. It's the colour of late afternoon light, of whisky, of old book pages, of things that feel considered and crafted rather than mass-produced. I use it for backgrounds, for gradients, for the moments where I want something to feel inviting rather than impressive. Amber is the colour equivalent of a handshake - welcoming, warm, human.
Deep green (#0F4C3A) is groundedness. It's the colour of something established, something reliable, something that has roots. I use it sparingly - it's the most serious of the four, the one that anchors everything else. When the reds and purples and ambers are creating energy and warmth and creativity, the deep green is quietly saying "and all of this is built on solid ground."
The paper that isn't quite white
I keep coming back to the background, because I think it's the most important colour decision I have made. Every other colour sits on top of it. Every piece of text is read against it. Every image, every card, every button exists in relationship to this one tone. Get the background wrong and nothing else matters.
Pure white (#FFFFFF) is a very specific statement. It says "I'm digital. I'm clean. I'm precise." There's nothing wrong with that - Apple uses it brilliantly. But it isn't what I wanted. I wanted my products to feel like they were made by a person, not a corporation. I wanted the warmth of something physical - a well-loved book, a favourite notebook, a printed magazine. That meant the background needed to be slightly off-white, slightly warm, slightly imperfect.
#FAFAF7 achieves this. The F7 in the blue channel is what does it - it's very slightly less blue than pure white, which gives it that warm, yellowish tint that your brain reads as "paper" rather than "screen." It's such a subtle difference that most people can't see it when you show them the two colours side by side. But put a page of text on pure white and the same page of text on #FAFAF7 and everyone - everyone - will tell you the second one feels more comfortable to read. They won't be able to tell you why. But they'll feel it.
This is what I mean when I say colour is feeling. It operates below the level of conscious thought. You don't decide to feel comfortable reading on a warm background. Your eyes just relax. Your brain just settles. The experience just feels right. And because it feels right, you stay longer, you read more, you engage more deeply. All because of three hex values.
A design system hiding in plain sight
Four accent colours and one background tone, applied consistently across fourteen products. That isn't just a colour palette. That's a design system hiding in plain sight.
When you move from Modern Retro to Taste OS to CultureTerminal, the content changes completely. The purpose changes. The audience shifts. But the emotional foundation stays the same. The same warmth. The same energy. The same sense that someone with a point of view made this. The colours are doing the work of branding without any of the usual brand assets - no logo watermark, no tagline, no "made by Mike Litman" badge. Just a consistent palette that creates a consistent feeling.
I think about this a lot because my background is in advertising and brand strategy. I've spent years thinking about how brands create recognition and consistency across touchpoints. Usually that involves logos, guidelines, brand books, approved colour swatches with Pantone references, and entire teams dedicated to making sure the blue is the right blue. What I've discovered through building my own products is that you can achieve the same effect with much less - just be obsessively consistent about a small number of decisions.
The constraint is the point. Four colours is a constraint. But constraints create coherence. If I had twenty colours to choose from, every product would feel different. Every page would have a different energy. The portfolio would feel like a jumble sale rather than a collection. Four colours means I have to make every choice count. Red here, purple there, amber for this, green for that. Each use is deliberate because the options are limited.
This is something I learned from the publications I admire most - Monocle, Bloomberg Businessweek, It's Nice That. They all have incredibly restrained palettes. Not because they lack imagination, but because restraint is a form of sophistication. Anyone can use every colour. It takes discipline to use four. And that discipline, that consistency, that quiet confidence in a small set of decisions - that's what separates things that feel designed from things that just look decorated.
Colour isn't decoration. Colour is communication. Every hex value is a micro-decision about how something feels. And the best colour decisions are the ones nobody notices, the ones that work so naturally that they disappear into the experience, shaping how you feel without ever announcing what they're doing. Invisible. Intentional. And everywhere.
