Colors and Fonts

To best support the visual identity standards, always use color in moderation. The Primary Palette has been built to help designers do this by limiting its function and color options. It consists of black, white and Pantone® 116c (yellow) for coated applications, and black, white and Pantone® 109u (yellow) for uncoated applications. Its function is to provide color choices for a flat background color area (a dominant field that is filled with any one of these colors). The limited amount of colors in this palette helps designers focus their efforts toward other elements of design (dynamic photography and interesting, highly functional relief elements), which are where the power and sophistication of this design program reside.

The Primary-Centric Palette consists of colors that are closer to yet slightly expanded from Wichita State's Primary Palette. These colors are the safest colors to use to avoid color incompatibilities in design projects. Their origins are within the Primary Palette, and they can be relied upon in most cases to offer color choices that are more harmonious with that palette. It is ideal not to use these colors in a dominant way but rather as relief elements, providing more of a color "spike" or "highlight" to help feature or accent a part of a layout.

The third color palette is the Supplemental Palette, which is reserved for colors that go beyond the Primary-Centric Palette. An example of such an application might be when needing to color-code or differentiate between numerous pieces of similar printed literature. The colors from this palette venture further from the Primary Palette. However, these colors are lower in saturation to allow them to easily work with and connect to the Primary Palette in more of an accent or relief role. The best way to think about usage of this palette is "sparingly."

To further illustrate the way these three color palettes can offer easy, powerful and attractive design solutions while allowing designers to focus on the more critical aspects of the design pieces, an example of just one design solution using the three palettes has been included.

In the example of a typical brochure cover design, the largest background area or "field" of flat color is at the bottom and is filled with white from the Primary Palette. The subject of the brochure (in the band of text in the upper right) is accented with a small "spike" of color (dark violet) from the Supplemental Palette. This treatment as a relief element helps focus attention toward the subject while also providing an anchor for the text. The area around the white band that houses the subject text has been filled with a color from the Primary-Centric Palette, bringing more attention to the title while introducing another small area of color (this instance of color allows the designer a precedent for using the color perhaps on the interior of the brochure). Finally, the photograph provides an area of great visual interest and another dynamic source of color for the designer to explore. This is made possible in part because many of the color selections have been simplified by the three-palette system, allowing more time to be focused on composition and photographic interest.

This is just one simple example of how the system can work. Not all three of the palettes have to be used in the same design solution. Many times only one or two of the palettes may be required for the desired solution. The system is a tool to provide people responsible for design of WSU publications and collateral
materials with more time for focusing on key areas that will help elevate and unify design communication pieces.