TYPE TIP: Contrast of Colour

It’s easy to create contrast in your typography by using different colours of text (not too many).

Before the printing press, when text was drawn by hand, it was common for colourful, ornamented initials to be placed on pages. With the advent of mechanical type and for economic reasons, these fancy letters were dropped.

Even today, it’s not always economical to print in “full colour” so sometimes, using black with one other colour is the best way to add colour.

Even if you have the budget to print in full colour or if you are designing web graphics, only using one colour besides black can be a wise way to go as the contrast creates strength, simplicity and unity of design.

One of my own projects used this very technique. The cover of the program for the Pacific Contact program is printed using just two colours (black and red). Because the print run is fairly small, running it in full colour (four colour, CMYK) is not feasible.

Which other colour to use?
You should try to use a colour appropriate for your message. Warm colours such as red jump out at you on the page, whereas cold colours such as blue, recede.

In other words, red screams action. Blue says “cool” so if you are doing a poster for a play about an ice queen, you may want to use a cold colour.

Keep in mind that a hot colour like red can dominate a page, so use it sparingly. If you had two words, one in a light text and one in a heavy text, you’d probably not want the heavy text to be in red unless it was very appropriate.

–

The image above is from the front cover of the Pacific Contact program. The image on the cover is of MOVE: the company.