Google launches tool to help developers choose the right colour for their app

Google is expanding its Material Design guidelines; the colourful, grid-based design language developed by Google to unify its web and mobile properties. To enable developers test different palettes of colours for their application, Google has launched a brand new tool that helps them to create colour schemes with lighter and darker shades of primary and secondary colours — think light orange and Purple, or bright cyan and faded magenta.

A new text accessibility feature has also been added that lets you check if text is accessible on different-colored backgrounds, as measured using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines legibility standards. It mostly focuses on the contrast between text and background to help people with vision impairments better read online.

And a colour preview feature allows developers preview pallet changes and automatically generates the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code necessary to implement the changes.

“Material Design is a system that supports and strengthens communication and productivity with new tools and inspiration,” Rachel Been, creative lead for Material Design, said. “With these new tools to dabble with colour schemes, you’ll be able to give your users a richer experience, so we can’t wait to see what you come up with.”

Google is expecting these improvements will help developers and designers to provide users with “a richer experience” across everything from Android to Chrome OS to the web.