Color Scheme Inspiration – Giant Thanksgiving Parade Balloons

WRITTEN BY

Zach Dunn

Zach is the Co-Founder and Director of Front End Development at One Mighty Roar in Boston, Massachusetts.

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Color Scheme Inspiration – Giant Thanksgiving Parade Balloons

In honor of Thanksgiving in the United States, we’ve put together a very special (questionably) inspired color scheme inspiration.

Our non-US readers might be wondering what giant balloons has to do with memorializing the pilgrims. For over 75 years, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade through New York City has been an annual Thanksgiving morning event. Even though it doesn’t have much to do with the founding of our country, we’ve come to love it anyway. Besides, this isn’t a history blog.

This round of color palettes was inspired by one of the parade’s favorites — the giant balloon characters. Over the years, there have been a number of interesting characters to float over the city streets. As you’ll see below, it often takes entire armies of people just to keep the balloons under control. Inspiration comes from weird places, and this is just another great example.

Photos are all found via Flickr (follow image links for author info). Color schemes are available to download through COLOURlovers.

Palettes from Giant Balloon Characters

Float On

That does it for this round of color inspiration. Once again, if you are inspired to make your own balloon centered pallette, we’d love to see you share it with our official Colourlovers group for Build Internet! readers. Go ahead and inspire us!

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19 Comments 2 Mentions

Eric B. Author Editor
Wow. You can really get some nice colour schemes from these!

Thanks for all of these!

November 25, 2009 · Reply
Designerfoo Author Editor
Yeah, never thought that my site would have same color bombo as the smurfs :D well…almost!

November 25, 2009 · Reply
Maria Author Editor
Thanks for this post :) I love Garfields’ ballon and colors!

November 26, 2009 · Reply
Design Ideas Author Editor
Nice way to get colors schemes.

November 26, 2009 · Reply
Rahul – Web Guru Author Editor
Nice color scheme inspiration from other objects.

November 26, 2009 · Reply
Kevinsturf Author Editor
great schemes. I went to the parade and it was amazing. Really great thing to go to.

November 27, 2009 · Reply
Martina Breithaupt Author Editor
I really like a lot of stuff you guys do, but these Color Scheme Inspiration articles… I mean come on, that’s nothing more than playing around with a color palette generator, my 4year old daughter can do that! I want the old design community back! What has happened? Get some inspiration from Drawar!

November 28, 2009 · Reply
- Zach Dunn Author Editor
  @Martina
  
  Sorry to hear you think that. I think people reading that article on Drawar need to remember something. When you run a blog, you also have the right to post what is fun for yourself.
  
  The Drawar article calls for originality in design posts, not a new-found scrutiny for those that aren’t to your particular taste. That’s something that is more characteristic of the arts community (After all, I’m sure a 4 year old could also paint some abstract art out there too)
  
  You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but different people enjoy different things. Color Scheme Inspiration is the oldest series on this blog, and has been well received over the past year. Not everyone may love them, but that’s perfectly fine. If our average reader enjoys about 70% of our monthly posts, we’ll count it as a success. We’ve learned early on that trying to please everyone just makes you insane.
  
  November 28, 2009 · Reply
Bogdan Pop Author Editor
@martina:
How much would your daughter charge for 13 cool color schemes? These guys charge nothing!

And to some point, there’s a trend in creating such list articles. Trend that attracts visitors. Why fight against the current?

November 28, 2009 · Reply
Bogdan Pop Author Editor
Almost forgot. Even Twitter has lists! Fight that would ya?

November 28, 2009 · Reply
Martina Breithaupt Author Editor
@Zach
Thank you for your answer. I guess I did not mean to come over as a hard core critics. It is just so frustrating to see everything going under in this sea of non-originality and it is a trend, and I just don’t like it. I guess I needed to let it out somewhere… sorry that it hit you guys, I really like your blog (75% of it).
@Bogdan
Not every trend that attracts visitors means that it is a good one…besides, there is no better way to “attract” people than great content.

November 28, 2009 · Reply
Wayne Dahlberg Author Editor
(First off, you guys are awesome and every once in a while you post amazing content. Thank you!)

Having said that…

Zach, I think in this particular article, you are doing yourself more of a disservice than the design community at large. If you constantly revert to running articles that are fun and easy to cultivate (lists, color schemes, etc..) you’ll find your readers diminish down to those who will accept that kind of content. But if you push your personal envelope a bit more, include more of your opinion and experience in using design & layout principles with living images & examples, you might hold on to more readers. Better yet, they can get to know YOU on a more personal level as the brand of BuildInternet!. Nothing but good things can come of it.

Granted, the ‘Quantity over Quality’ perspective works with some things in this world. but if you want to improve the experience of anything (e.g. websites, video games, movies…) this approach quickly loses value to those things of quality. That’s why quality costs more, that’s why quality takes more time, and is less abundant.

If your mission with BuildInternet! is not to consistently create a greater experience for your readers, but instead get more visitors, click-throughs and page hits in the short term, then I am wrong, and you should keep posting articles like this. We all know it works for other sites.

November 28, 2009 · Reply
Zach Dunn Author Editor
@Wayne (and everyone else)

Thanks for the insight. It’s certainly our goal to promote substantial discussion, but we’ve also got other roles to fulfill. I think Vitaly’s response to the Drawar article captures our mentality best.

That being said, we’ll be putting in an effort over the coming months to make more substantial posts. This has given us plenty to think about for Build Internet’s future.

November 29, 2009 · Reply
Shawn B. Author Editor
One of the things that I like so much about this site is that you have a mix of showcases and color schemes that are low-effort (relatively) and good for inspiration as well as in depth tutorials and educational pieces which are very well done and must take a lot of work.

I would rather have some ‘filler’ color schemes in between than just an exhaustive post once a month. I think both have an important place and I will keep coming back for all of it.

That said, I can see the reason for criticism, that drawer post did illuminate a big shortcoming of the industry and used Build Internet as an example, which makes them a great target, but it doesn’t take much prodding to see that along with the lists the Dunn’s post some pretty unique stuff. I suggest you go back to their early stuff, before they got this huge surge of work, and see what they did back when they had free time.

November 29, 2009 · Reply
Marty.FM Author Editor
@Zach

“(After all, I’m sure a 4 year old could also paint some abstract art out there too) ”

Thanks for the link to my Flickr photo. I think. However… I’m not 4 years old and I didn’t paint it!

December 3, 2009 · Reply
aledesign.it Author Editor
Really nice.. I remember a scene in “VANILLA SKY” where Tom Cruise see inside your appartaments the show under you… A beatiful day! For every child…

December 4, 2009 · Reply
Jen | UPrinting Author Editor
The Spongebob balloon honestly creeps me out, but it’s funny that I really like the color palette you got out of that. ;p

About the heated discussion that I apparently missed, I’d just like to share a couple of thoughts, since I feel I should say something too: I also do the kinds of design-oriented posts that that Drawar post would criticize severely. But I also can’t claim to be a designer; I just enjoy sharing this kind of content with readers, which, as I understand it, is also where Scrivs came from. (And I’ve got other roles to fulfill, too.) With that said, I liked your post here because it encourages people to look for design inspiration through an unlikely source (I can’t say much about what this blog’s direction has been lately yet since I’m only a new subscriber). I think Vitaly has his priorities just about right. I’m sorry that the higher class of professional designers feel they’re being shortchanged by what design posts have been putting out nowadays, but for someone like me, everything still seems perfectly fine, and the discrimination that seems to be rising because of that very thought-provoking post makes me feel threatened to learn more about the field in my own way.

I actually feel apprehensive about posting this since I don’t think I’m that ready to have angry responses thrown my way yet. But I think it’s important that you guys know we little (or puny!) guys still appreciate all you do. So, thanks.

December 10, 2009 · Reply
Haavard Aurstad Author Editor
Thanks for sharing these color palettes Zach. Some find these interesting and some find them a wast of time. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just how we are – different.

For myself, I enjoy looking at palettes when coming up with a new design just to get more ideas flowing. I’ve been using the Kuler service over at Adobe in several occasions to get a feel of popular palettes and colors working good together. It’s been working great and is a nice place along with ColourLovers to get some ideas. Some inspiration is better than non!

August 9, 2010 · Reply
trendnike Author Editor
Let`s write that letter we thought of writing “one of these days”.

June 1, 2011 · Reply