Use color with care

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Use color to communicate. Don’t use color to decorate.

Use few colors. Usually, you don’t need more than two or three. Often, the best solution is to use gray as a third “color” so that you only have black, another color, and gray.

Use unobtrusive colors.

Reserve striking colors for things that are especially important, such as warnings.

Don’t use color as the only coding. When a text is printed on a black and white printer, color is lost. Also, about up to 8% of men are color blind or partly color blind.

Make sure that the chosen colors have a different gray scale value.

Apply a second coding:

For text, a second coding can be bold or italic font style.

For lines, a second coding can be a different line width or line style, such as dashed or dotted.

For areas, a second coding can be a different fill pattern.

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Font color

On paper, the bigger the contrast between the text and the background is, the easier it is to read the text. On screen, however, if the contrast is too strong, this may result in slight flickering.

Tip:
In a printed manual, use black font color on white paper. In online help, use dark gray on a white background. A good gray value, for example, is an RGB value of 34,34,34 (or 222222 as a hexadecimal value).

Dark text on a light background is easier to read than light text on a dark background. For this reason, use inverted text sparingly. However, for small phrases, the poorer readability is almost irrelevant. So, an inverted book title on a cover page, or an inverted row title or column title in a table is OK. If used only for short phrases, inverted text can be an excellent way to provide a high contrast without the need to add an extra color.

Use existing colors

Often, a corporate style, a company logo, a product logo, or the product itself already use certain colors. In this case, don’t add new colors but use the existing ones. Your document then appears as an integral part of the product family.

Tip:
Often, it’s a good idea to pick out the most prominent color from the product logo and to use this color as the only color within your document except for black and gray. For example, you can use the highlighting color for level-1 headings, for your product’s name, for bullets in bulleted lists, for numbers in numbered lists, or for callout lines in pictures.

Tip:
If you need a second color, choose a lighter or darker version of the first color, or choose the complementary color of the first color.

Choose harmonious colors

Don’t rely on your individual preferences but use a professional tool or table for finding a set of harmonious colors. Some image editors and desktop publishing programs even come with a built-in color tool. If your program doesn’t have such a tool, you can find various free color scheme generators on the Internet. Search for “color scheme generator” or “color scheme designer.”

Tip:
If your corporate style guide, your company logo, your product logo, or your product itself already include a defined base color, use this color as the primary color and look for colors that blend well with this color.


Use clear and simple design