Within sig­nage & wayfind­ing design the way of color and con­trast are impor­tant fac­tors to effec­tively com­mu­ni­cate a mes­sage. Col­ors have dif­fer­ent mean­ings and work in var­i­ous ways in con­trast together. This arti­cle will explain the mean­ing of color and will show var­i­ous exam­ples of contrast.

Con­trast between the fore­ground and back­ground is one of the most impor­tant fac­tors for the ease of read­ing. If coloured text is used on a bright back­ground the con­trast will be weak, for opti­mal con­trast results is white text against dark col­ored back­grounds. In sig­nage & wayfind­ing design color is the com­bin­ing fac­tor to har­mo­nize the sign with the envi­ron­ment. Color pro­grams will dis­tin­guish signs from each other and can offer an indi­ca­tion of the mes­sage with­out hav­ing to be able to under­stand the lan­guage of the sign.

Basics of color groups: Color wheel

Swiss painter and designer Johannes Itten cre­ated a color wheel that is a orga­ni­za­tion of 12 color hues around in a cir­cle show­ing rela­tion­ships between the col­ors. The col­ors are pre­sented in the fol­low­ing way:

• Pri­mary col­ors: Blue, red & yellow
• Sec­ondary col­ors: Green, orange & violet
• Com­ple­men­tary col­ors: Red–orange, red–violet, yellow–orange, yellow–green, blue–violet & blue–green.

Most color wheels are based on Goethe’s The­ory of Colours, the first sys­tem­atic study of the phys­i­o­log­i­cal effects of color (1810). His obser­va­tions on the effect of opposed col­ors led him to a sym­met­ric arrange­ment of his color wheel, “for the colours dia­met­ri­cally opposed to each other… are those which rec­i­p­ro­cally evoke each other in the eye.” (via wikipedia)

The color wheel can be a basis for the color scheme for the design you are about to cre­ate. Using the wheel you can eas­ily find the com­bi­na­tions between the col­ors and see what works best. See the oppo­site col­ors and com­bine the col­ors into a sig­nage color scheme.

Mean­ing of color

• Black is not actu­ally a color but is often used as back­ground sur­face in sign design, black can offer a attrac­tion in a visual crowed envi­ron­ment. Mean­ing of black: Black is asso­ci­ated with power, ele­gance, for­mal­ity, death, evil, and mystery.
• White as back­ground sur­face has the abil­ity to absorb dark let­ter­ing into its sur­round­ings, in order to make white work good in sign design use a mat­ted sur­face with glossy let­ter­ing. Mean­ing of white: White is asso­ci­ated with light, good­ness, inno­cence, purity, and vir­gin­ity. It is con­sid­ered to be the color of perfection.
• Red is a sig­nal color, as back­ground red is mostly used for warn­ing signs. Mean­ing of red: Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is asso­ci­ated with energy, war, dan­ger, strength, power, deter­mi­na­tion as well as pas­sion, desire, and love.
• Yel­low in sign design is used as back­ground, yel­low has a func­tion of send­ing out a mes­sage and works good in a spa­cial envi­ron­ment, it stands out. Mean­ing of yel­low: Yel­low is the color of sun­shine. It’s asso­ci­ated with joy, hap­pi­ness, intel­lect, and energy.
• Blue is one of mankind favourite color, but for design blue will not always have the best results, try using var­i­ous hues of blue to find the best match­ing results. Mean­ing of blue: Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often asso­ci­ated with depth and sta­bil­ity. It sym­bol­izes trust, loy­alty, wis­dom, con­fi­dence, intel­li­gence, faith, truth, and heaven.
• Resource the mean­ing of color fur­ther on this page.

Black back­ground

In sign & wayfind­ing design con­trast will let you read the signs at ease. Below you will find var­i­ous exam­ples of good and bad con­trast in order to make the design work.

With a black back­ground the let­ter­ing tends to stand out more onto to back­ground than with other col­ored back­grounds. Black is one of the few sur­faces that lets other col­ored text work great together. Beware of too small let­ter­ing with too high con­trast (white let­ter­ing), these will lead to less leg­i­bil­ity of the text because of over­whelm­ing back­ground. With large let­ter­ing white on black works great. Also yel­low on black is a good combination.

Advis­able work areas: Air­port sig­nage, office build­ing signs, visual over­whelm­ing envi­ron­ments, hotel sig­nage, indoor usage.

White back­ground

White back­ground sur­face gives the most work­able com­bi­na­tions, but beware of that white can absorb its envi­ron­ment. Black let­ter­ing tends to be squeezed into the back­ground mak­ing it hard to read. Lower con­trast let­ter­ing gives bet­ter results like blue, orange and red.

White back­grounds can be used spe­cific sign projects where design plays a big­ger part than the actual wayfind­ing. For instance using sil­ver let­ter­ing on a white back­ground can give fab­u­lous results, due the shadow of the sil­ver let­ter­ing the text becomes read­able on the white surface.

Advis­able work areas: Museum sig­nage, office build­ing signs, pylon sig­nage, retail sig­nage, hos­pi­tal sig­nage, indoor & out­door usage.

Yel­low background

Yel­low back­ground works best in visual crowded envi­ron­ments, for archi­tec­tural and psy­cho­log­i­cal fac­tors yel­low is often used. Yel­low with black let­ter­ing sends out a clear infor­ma­tion mes­sage which is needed in such an envi­ron­ment. Using yel­low also makes in easy to use orange, red and green which all work great together in a sig­nage system.

Yel­low is a much used back­ground color for air­port sig­nage, orig­i­nally started by Paul Mijk­se­naar for Schiphol Air­port sig­nage, nowa­days yel­low is seen in many air­ports around the world. Yel­low in com­bi­na­tion with black let­ter­ing gives ease to read and at the same time a clear infor­ma­tion mes­sage in its surroundings.

Also for traf­fic signs yel­low works good as back­ground color in com­bi­na­tion with black let­ter­ing. In a out­door sit­u­a­tion, yel­low stands out from its back­ground giv­ing a clear mes­sage. In many Euro­pean coun­tries yel­low is cho­sen as back­ground color.

Advis­able work areas: Air­port sig­nage, road signs, pub­lic spaces, indoor & out­door usage.

Red back­ground

Red is often used for warn­ing signs, red sends out a sig­nal of warn­ing, dan­ger. Many of the warn­ing signs con­sist of a red back­ground with yel­low or white let­ter­ing, by using pic­tograms as warn­ing the signs are multi-language and don’t need expla­na­tion, even if you can­not read the text.

Red is a very pow­er­ful color which stands out in a visual crowded envi­ron­ment. I have seen var­i­ous other signs pro­duced with red but in my opin­ion red is a sig­nal color. Works great with black, white and yel­low lettering.

Advis­able work areas: Warn­ing signs, pub­lic spaces, indoor & out­door usage.

Blue back­ground

Blue is one of mankind favourite color, as is rep­re­sents sky, heaven, trust and faith. The color blue is good rec­og­nized with white let­ter­ing as infor­ma­tion sign. In the Nether­lands all high­way signs are with blue back­ground as well as the rail­way signs.

To use blue in sign sys­tems beware of cre­ate enough con­trast in order to make the signs work best. For instance with light blue a higher con­trast let­ter­ing will be needed such as black and for dark blue white let­ter­ing will work best.

Advis­able work areas: High­way signs, rail­way signs, hotel sig­nage, retail sig­nage, pub­lic spaces, indoor & out­door usage.

Pur­ple background

Pur­ple will not be your direct usage of back­ground color for sig­nage color sys­tems, but pur­ple is a fash­ion color which is asked by clients to use. Pur­ple works great with lighter col­ored let­ter­ing such as white or yellow.

Pur­ple can be used in sig­nage sys­tems but beware of its archi­tec­tural envi­ron­ment, as pur­ple is a very pow­er­ful color it can eas­ily fade into the back­ground mak­ing the sign unreadable.

Use the color wheel to cre­ate the hue of col­ors around the color pur­ple. Pur­ple rep­re­sents roy­alty and spir­i­tu­al­ity, it was Pan­tones color of the year 2008. PANTONE® 18–3943 BLUE IRIS.

Advis­able work areas: Museum sig­nage, hotel sig­nage, retail sig­nage, indoor usage.

Sil­ver (brushed) background

Sil­ver (metal) is an often used color as back­ground in sign sys­tems. With metal signs you are able to gain a robust look & feel for the sig­nage sys­tem. Metal has a dif­fer­ent sur­face when look­ing at it from dif­fer­ent angles, mak­ing it not always a good con­trast with the lettering.

On a sil­ver back­ground almost all col­ors work well, even white. In future arti­cles I will go deeper into using sil­ver as background.

Metal signs are fre­quently used in office sig­nage, with black let­ter­ing it will cre­ate a very styl­ish look and feel.

Advis­able work areas: Office sig­nage, name­plate design, pub­lic spaces, indoor & out­door usage.

Typog­ra­phy & color contrast

Not only is the con­trast impor­tant also the cho­sen type­face will make the dif­fer­ence in a good or bad sign. When using too bold weighted type­faces the text will look like its expand­ing of the sign, when using too light weighted type­faces the text will fall back into its back­ground. Medium or Reg­u­lar weights are usu­ally the best options to choose for a good and read­able sign.

Please share your thoughts

What do you find the most attractive/readable col­ored back­ground?
Look­ing for­ward dis­cussing about col­ors & signs! Thank you in advance.