Color is hard
Color is hard
Color is hard
May 22, 2024
Equitable design patterns
As our team leverages variables to apply themes across a design system, things break. Maintaining accessible color contrast across multiple components with various states is a beast of task.
Brand colors can vary from light to dark affecting foreground contrast.
State changes across various components require independent contrast checks for foreground text.
Yellow. (Do I need to say more? Whether its a brand or system color, yellow and orange demand special attention)
Color for brand designers working with product teams
by Katie Cooper
I dig everything Katie Cooper writes about color for design systems. The approach outlined offers a great perspective on how to evaluate brand color viability. It includes considerations for secondary colors and color ramps as you develop proper contrast ratios.
Read the full article
The dark yellow problem by Lodestar Design
via UX Collective
I know a lot of folks have touched on this, but I like how succinctly this writeup spells out the problems when designing with yellow while trying to maintain some form or brand consistency. Mustard anyone?
Color in design systems
A classic write up on color in design systems and considerations for theming. Big takeaways for our team included limiting how themes cascade through various components like links and buttons, as well as ensuring any “changes” to brand colors to meet the needs of the UI get approval first. If you haven’t read everything by Nathan on Medium on design systems you’re missing out!
So grateful for all the resources out there and hope some of this can be useful to your team. From our research, the team has established a few best practices:
Start by auditing color contrast options across all brand colors through color ramps and component states
Ensure a consistent lightness ramp across all steps of each color in the palette to help with predictable contrast
Pay special attention to your yellows to balance brand consistency with accessibility
Limit how brand colors cascade into critical elements such as forms, buttons and links to ensure usability
Continue to use plugins and manual review to check color contrast ratios across the system, components and patterns as you go
As our team leverages variables to apply themes across a design system, things break. Maintaining accessible color contrast across multiple components with various states is a beast of task.
Brand colors can vary from light to dark affecting foreground contrast.
State changes across various components require independent contrast checks for foreground text.
Yellow. (Do I need to say more? Whether its a brand or system color, yellow and orange demand special attention)
Color for brand designers working with product teams
by Katie Cooper
I dig everything Katie Cooper writes about color for design systems. The approach outlined offers a great perspective on how to evaluate brand color viability. It includes considerations for secondary colors and color ramps as you develop proper contrast ratios.
Read the full article
The dark yellow problem by Lodestar Design
via UX Collective
I know a lot of folks have touched on this, but I like how succinctly this writeup spells out the problems when designing with yellow while trying to maintain some form or brand consistency. Mustard anyone?
Color in design systems
A classic write up on color in design systems and considerations for theming. Big takeaways for our team included limiting how themes cascade through various components like links and buttons, as well as ensuring any “changes” to brand colors to meet the needs of the UI get approval first. If you haven’t read everything by Nathan on Medium on design systems you’re missing out!
So grateful for all the resources out there and hope some of this can be useful to your team. From our research, the team has established a few best practices:
Start by auditing color contrast options across all brand colors through color ramps and component states
Ensure a consistent lightness ramp across all steps of each color in the palette to help with predictable contrast
Pay special attention to your yellows to balance brand consistency with accessibility
Limit how brand colors cascade into critical elements such as forms, buttons and links to ensure usability
Continue to use plugins and manual review to check color contrast ratios across the system, components and patterns as you go
As our team leverages variables to apply themes across a design system, things break. Maintaining accessible color contrast across multiple components with various states is a beast of task.
Brand colors can vary from light to dark affecting foreground contrast.
State changes across various components require independent contrast checks for foreground text.
Yellow. (Do I need to say more? Whether its a brand or system color, yellow and orange demand special attention)
Color for brand designers working with product teams
by Katie Cooper
I dig everything Katie Cooper writes about color for design systems. The approach outlined offers a great perspective on how to evaluate brand color viability. It includes considerations for secondary colors and color ramps as you develop proper contrast ratios.
Read the full article
The dark yellow problem by Lodestar Design
via UX Collective
I know a lot of folks have touched on this, but I like how succinctly this writeup spells out the problems when designing with yellow while trying to maintain some form or brand consistency. Mustard anyone?
Color in design systems
A classic write up on color in design systems and considerations for theming. Big takeaways for our team included limiting how themes cascade through various components like links and buttons, as well as ensuring any “changes” to brand colors to meet the needs of the UI get approval first. If you haven’t read everything by Nathan on Medium on design systems you’re missing out!
So grateful for all the resources out there and hope some of this can be useful to your team. From our research, the team has established a few best practices:
Start by auditing color contrast options across all brand colors through color ramps and component states
Ensure a consistent lightness ramp across all steps of each color in the palette to help with predictable contrast
Pay special attention to your yellows to balance brand consistency with accessibility
Limit how brand colors cascade into critical elements such as forms, buttons and links to ensure usability
Continue to use plugins and manual review to check color contrast ratios across the system, components and patterns as you go