Using Colour to Convey Information

The good news is that using colour to convey information usually makes your pages look good as well.

Colour is one of the best ways of conveying meaning. Many people use it for explicit meaning, telling people the meanings of various colours on their pages or in their illustration. That is the least intuitive way to use it. People "know" intuitively that what is in red is very important. They know that darker coloured objects are heavier than lighter coloured ones, that white is cold and red is hot.

If you do give arbitrary meanings to colours, don't force people to remember more than four colours if they have to remember them across pages. (More are fine in a single diagram.) But using colour cues to tell people what kind of pages they are on works very well, and you don't have to explicitly tell them anything.

People are so aware of colours that subtle changes will be noticed, though perhaps not at a conscious level. A just-noticeable difference is enough to cue people that they have entered a different section of the web. (I've seen this done very well, and someday we hope to do it here in Esmerel.)

Make sure that you use bright colours only for important information, critical information. Use the most saturated colour where you want people to look first -- because that is what will happen. Try a squint test. Narrow your eyes until everything on your page blurs, and see what stands out.

High contrast is good for text, but you don't want it TOO high contrast. The highest contrast is to use complements, and that is too much; it looks obnoxious. Avoid fully-saturated colours for text.

Vary the lightness of two adjoining colours if the boundary is important.

Good information design can overcome density. More text on a page can be made understandable if you use colour to convey what's most important, what's peripheral, and so on.

Design in black and white. If your design doesn't work in black and white, it won't work in colour.

And remember that the best design is transparent. It just works.

Choosing web-friendly colours.

Using colour for sensory appeal.

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