The Do's and Dont's of Infographic Design (2)
Of the three, one should be the background color (usually the lightest of the three), and the other two should break up the sections. If you need to add other colors, use shades of the three main colors. This will keep the palette cohesive and calming, rather than jarring.
USE THE TOOLS AT YOUR DISPOSAL
When picking colors, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. A number of great websites out there will help you choose the right palette for your infographic.Adobe's Kuler offers fresh themes and a searchable database, as well as an easy tool to adjust the palette that you're interested in. One issue with Kuler is that all of the palettes have five colors, and the colors are sometimes from completely different families, rather than shades of a few primary colors, so finding the right palette can be like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Another color-picking tool is COLOURlovers. This database is easier to search through: it breaks palettes into different themes and can be sorted by favorites. While most of the palettes also consist of five colors, the colors are not always given equal weight; instead, the tool suggests which should be dominant. Here are some good and bad palettes for infographics:
Final Thoughts Link While these standards are important to consider for most infographic designs, sometimes an infographic comes along that breaks all of these rules and still succeeds immensely. In the end, clients like “eye candy” and designs that “pop!” While such terms are subjective (and annoying to most designers), we all know a great infographic design when we see one, and your clients do, too. Use these rules to guide you into the infographic realm, but create your own techniques and standards after you've gained some experience.
