Style guide - Colour schemes

Colour Schemes

For the original design of my magazine, I wanted to use colours that instigated conversation, such as blues and greens. I based my colour ideas against other examples of travel magazines, most notably the National Geographic Traveller magazine. This publication uses a standard yellow border, with bold white text for the masthead, and this is symbolic of that publication.

I wanted to create something different, by using colours that complemented each other well, and didn’t affect the image of the publication in a negative way.

My initial thoughts were to avoid colours such as pinks, purples, fluorescent, and dark colours such

as black and brown.

The Traveller magazine uses oranges, in contrast with the background which is an image that has a background of blue.

The texts have three main colours, being the orange-peach shade, white, and black text.

My ideas from this were to stick to a main tri-colour scheme that complemented each other, and the background.

Inside the publication however, I noticed that pinks, purples and other colours I was going to avoid had been used.

This made me reconsider using these, as with other editions of the magazine I have, Traveller has used these colours on its front page dependent on the background.

 

Here are some other examples I have looked at.

 

 

I tried using greens and blues as my first design set for the colours.

As I was creating my first publication, I explored some of the colours and created my own colour swatch, which is the green shade I used for the border. I wanted to set a colour that wasn’t too bright, but was neutral in its affect and appeal, and also complimented the blue text.

The background image was something I had yet to explore with, although I knew what the image would entail. As it would be green and blue backgrounds in the image, I hadn’t considered how this may affect the schemes of the colours I was using.

I decide to explore a colour wheel to see if this could help me decide and consider other colours.

 

This is the first colour set based upon I tri-colour scheme that I explored. I wanted to use shades of blue still, but as researched in other publications, purple can be as affective if used against the correct background.

The orange shade would have been used as my third colour, with the main text being purple, and second a sky shade of blue.

I considered these and made some adjustments on the colour wheel, opting for an analogic set such as this one.

This adjusted the colours set, but after I had decided my background, I matched this against it and explored with these colours in alternative shades.

 

 

This was the outcome as I opted for the colour scheme above.

The masthead bodes well against the green and blue of the background, allowing the image to sit in the background centrally.

The orange shade contrasts well with the other colours in the image, such as grey and green.

The purple text on screen looks difficult to read, but as the publication will be printed on a much larger scale, which I had up scaled the image to, it is clear and legible.

My concerns with these colours are dyslexic and visually impaired people being able to read the text. This is something I am considering, but if the colour schemes work in other publications I have researched, then I will stick to my selection.

The main colours of the front page will be exhibited throughout, but not strictly, and on a page by page basis dependent on the images and other aspects on the page.