This ain’t your father’s Twitter background: COLOURlovers themeleon takes custom theming to a whole new level

Now, I know, I know. I’ve doted on Portland-based COLOURlovers time and time again. If I’m waxing philosophic about the amazing community they’ve built around sharing color palettes then I’m highlighting another award or recognition they’ve received. It really and truly is one of the most beautiful sites in Portland—if not on the entire Web.

But their latest little venture has me a wee bit slackjawed. Not only is it an excellent application of the wealth of color knowledge they’ve accumulated, it’s also a tool that makes even the hue managing challenged—like yours truly—look like a true artiste.

Introducing COLOURlovers themeleon, an Web-based service that will let you create stunning Twitter backgrounds in a matter of seconds—and soon likely themes for any number of customizable sites.

Custom Twitter background? Yeah yeah. I hear you. And I can see you shaking your head there, Mr. or Mrs. Sassypants. “I can work that magic in PhotoShop. What’s Rick got himself all worked up about this time?”

But trust me on this one. This thing is easy—and addictive.

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Once you get the hang of the interface, you’ll be busting out new backgrounds in seconds. Step 1: Pick a pattern. Step 2: Pick a pallette. Step 3: Start mucking.

Not sure what colors to pick? No problem. Because themeleon is also social. Meaning you can use palettes created by people who know far more about palette making than you or me. Pick from the most popular palettes or take a gander and the latest ones.

Don’t like where a color is sitting? Drag it somewhere else and watch your layout change as you work. Want to change a hue? You can call up the color palette to tweak it to your heart’s desire.

And here’s the other thing. It’s not just changing the background image. It’s changing your whole Twitter color palette. So that your background image, sidebar, text, and links are all complementary. Read: you look like you know what you’re doing.

Muck around as much as you like. You’re going to get what you’re seeing on the screen.

And then once you’re done, log into Twitter and save it as your new background.

Did you screw up? Don’t worry. You’ve even got an undo.

Worried your background will look just like everyone else’s? Um. I doubt it. They’ve got 600,000 patterns and more than 1 million palettes with which you can work. That means you have almost… um. Uh. … combinations. You can combine them in… uh. Well. Suffice it to say it’s a lot. A lot. Like almost infinity or something.

Man. This has to be the nicest online design tool I’ve used in quite some time. And I’d be saying that even it wasn’t a Portland product. Maybe.

Last but not least, in the not too distant future, all of your theming could get this push-button easy. Thanks to the COLOURlovers API. That means you could be editing themes for Gmail, Blogger, tumblr, or any other service in much the say way. I mean, imagine if a WordPress theme designer took the opportunity to hook into the API. So you could tweak the colors intelligently without having to guess? Now we’re talking.

To try the service for yourself, visit COLOURlovers themeleon. For more tips on how to use this cool new tool, read this COLOURlovers blog post. For more on the community behind the magic or to start sharing color palettes with others, visit COLOURlovers.