Colour
Colours have temperature and relationships. Pick a small team and give one the lead.
Learn
Colours have feelings and friendships. Pick a small team of colours that get along, give one the lead, and your design will feel planned instead of random.
The colour wheel
All colours arranged in a circle. Neighbours blend; opposites clash in a useful way.
Warm and cool
Warm colours (fire colours) feel energetic, loud, exciting.
Cool colours (water and sky) feel calm, quiet, serious.
Two famous colour teams
Opposites (across the wheel, like blue and orange) make each other pop. Perfect for one loud button.
Neighbours (next to each other, like blue, teal, green) blend into calm, peaceful palettes.
The recipe that always works
One main colour to set the mood, one opposite colour saved for the single most important thing, and calm neutrals (white, grey, black) for everything else. And always check your text: strong contrast reads while weak contrast melts away.
Picking text and background colours
Words are only useful if people can read them. The secret is lightness distance: the text and its background must be far apart; one clearly dark, one clearly light.
✓ Dark on bright. The classic warning-sign pair. Readable from across the street.
✓ Dark on white. The book pair. Calm and easy for long reading.
✓ Light on dark. The cinema pair. Great for posters and night designs.
✕ Light on light. Two pale colours melt into each other.
✕ Medium on medium. Neither wins, so neither reads.
✕ Loud on loud. Two strong colours fight and the edges seem to buzz.
The squint test: squint at your design until it goes blurry. If the words vanish, your colours are too close; pick a darker or lighter one.
Wrong vs right
Seen in the wild
Event posters pick one main colour, then spend their single accent on the action.
CITY NIGHT RUN
5k under the lights · 21 August · Riverside
Register 1 2 3- 1One deep navy sets the whole mood: the main colour does the heavy lifting.
- 2The only orange on the poster lands on the Register button. Orange is navy's complement, so it pops with maximum energy.
- 3White text on navy passes the readability test from across the street.
Practice
Drag the pieces into place