Colour in branding

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Tertiary and extended palettes

Lesson 4 of 11 in Colour in branding.

How I make UI color palettes · UX Tools
Lesson

Anything with an interface needs more colours than a brand palette provides. A product surface needs backgrounds, borders, disabled states, hover states, four levels of text emphasis and a set of status colours, and none of that is a branding decision.

primary · almost everythingsecondary · accents andstatesextended · charts and edgecasesif every tier gets equal space on the page, none of them is primary
A primary pair, a secondary set and an extended range, in the proportions each is used.
A doodle of a blue swatch fanning into a strip of ten shades, with dotted lines linking individual shades to the background, borders, button, text bars and disabled button of a simple app screen.
One brand blue becomes a strip of ten shades from pale to dark, and each part of an app screen takes its colour from one fixed step.
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  1. Question 1, locked

    A designer nudges the interface error red towards the brand palette until it is a tasteful rust. What is wrong with that?

    • The meaning of an error colour is conventional, and the convention is not yours to edit
    • Rust sits outside the nine to eleven steps a generated ramp allows
    • Warm hues cannot be produced from a consistent lightness curve
    • Rust fails contrast against white on every screen
  2. Question 2, locked

    Which of these words means this? “The full set including every tint, shade and functional colour.”

    • Ratio
    • Ownable colour
    • Extended palette
    • Neutral
  3. Question 3, locked

    Which of these words means this? “A colour at several lightness steps, generated systematically.”

    • Tonal ramp
    • Metamerism
    • Coated and uncoated
    • Ratio

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