Color Combinations to Avoid in Graphics Design

The use of colors is very important in graphics design. It is through colors that designers manage to capture attention as well as the emotions of the target audiences. Color is not just important for the aesthetic aspects of branding, but also in connecting with the potential customers and giving them a reason to believe in the brand and use its products or services.

Quite often, designers rely on color combination to create various effects in their designs. This is not always a joy ride for most designers since a wrong combination would spell doom for the entire project. Whereas there are graphics design color tools and other resources to help designers get the color combination right, some are still not able to come up with the appropriate color shades. As you juggle your way around with the colors, here are some of the terrible color combinations you should always avoid-:

All green backgrounds with green, yellow or purple on the foreground

You might be tempted to think that having two colors with almost similar hues is a long gone concept, but you will be surprised to find tens of designers still doing it at this present time and age. Green and yellow colors have always been nice choices for landscape graphics, but using only these two colors in the design will compromise its visual appeal and readability. Green and yellow are two close together and will never give any great results. It becomes even worse should you decide to add a green background to it.

Light colors against a white background

Using light colors on a white background is another poor color combination that many designers like making in the course of their designs. It needs no special sense to know that the color white is already a light color, and so there is no way you can lay another light color on top of it. Such a design will require a lot of straining for people to read the content, even if all the text were to be made bold. This is where you need to remember the use of contrasting colors in design so that you come up with combinations that will be legible enough to all that see the design.

Rainbow or neon colors

You may wonder how eye-catching colors such as neon and rainbow colors can make a poor color combination. Well, it is true that they are very bright and easily recognizable, but only when used for lighting adverts at night. In graphic designs, neon and rainbow colors are irritating and very aversive. They make the eyes get tired quickly leading to lose of focus and attention on the design, and this takes away some of the reasons behind effective graphics design. Additionally, they will end up causing more negative feelings instead of the positive ones that designers want associated with the designs.

Textured, colored backgrounds with colored text

Using textured or colored background with a colored text is another irritating poor color combination that should be avoided at all costs. It’s not only in design that this happens but also it is a common occurrence in advertising. The problem with this type of poor color combination is that it jumbles up everything in the design making it impossible to see the images or read the text. If you have to use such a combination, then it would be advisable to play around with the opacity, or probably turn it down completely so that the colored text written above the textured background may become legible. However, this poor color combination should be avoided at all cost.

Purple, blue or red with a black ground

Colors red, blue or blue will never work well against a black background. If you use a text with these colors against a black background, no one will ever manage to read them. As a matter of fact, no text of any color will ever work against a black background. Preferably, you may consider using white or colored boxes if you have to adopt this poor color combination, but only for a line or two. Black is a very strong color and will overpower any color on the foreground making such a combination very terrible and poor combination.

Using white gradients with white text

Using white gradient with white text is another recipe for poor color combination. If you use gradients well, they will give you terrific results, but you have to be careful when using them so that you don’t hurt the entire design. It is not advisable to use the same gradient with the same text on the same design. It is true that the design might end up begin readable, but the overall look with be awful. It will also demonstrate that you lack creativity in color combination since you could only use the same gradient and the same text in the design.

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