Color - Graphics Tips for Presentations

Color can:	explain or emphasize a single point. make emphasized elements more vivid — highlight keywords. prioritize information or focus attention on important features. make new points stand out — distinguish special elements in graphs or tables. identify a recurring theme and speed comprehension. sort materials using color repetition.
Visiblity	Color must be seen when superimposed on a background of another color. Foreground and background elements must have enough contrast between them. Inappropriate colors interfere with legibility and too many colors can distract from the message. For slides and computer screen shows, use dark blues, darker grays, dark greens, and black for the backgrounds. Use yellows, light reds, and white for the text and graphics. For overhead transparencies, use very light yellow or blue for the background and dark colors for text and graphics. Be careful with shades of gray. Too fine a shade of gray and it (the gray dots) clump together making your graphics look dingy. Too coarse a shade will resemble eye doctors test charts. For video, keep away from bright colors, specifically reds, yellows, true whites, magentas and greens (yellow-greens) as these colors tend to create bleeding or halo effects when sent to the broadcast screen. Use medium colors. Medium reddish-brown will look like a red when projected to the video screen. A medium yellow with brown tints will look like a bright yellow on the screen. Use at least a 25% gray to emulate white as a true white is too hot on the screen. Medium blues, purples, greens and magentas or maroons work well for background colors, especially gradient backgrounds fading to an almost black color.
Differentiation	Use color to differentiate, group, emphasize, prioritize, and identify recurring themes. Create an accent on a particular word or graphic. Use the brightest color on the information you want to feature, since the audience will look at the brightest area first. Emphasize no more than 1-2 elements in a frame. Don’t use competing bright colors. Black has the maximum contrast against white and is the easiest to read. If you want an equivalent effect from color, you have to increase the size of the color carrying elements to compensate for decreased contrast. The loser the contrast is like the contrast between black and white, the less you have to increase the size of the text or graphic for it to be readily visible, i.e., light background, dark text. Color coded titles, bullets, graphics or text can speed up interpretation of the data. The color helps provide a location map for the viewer. In turn, the viewer is directed to the information by the colors rather than having to search.
Combinations	Don’t use too many colors or too many shades of one color. Keep graduated backgrounds subtle and smooth. Be careful which colors you use together. Very bright colors scream at your audience and tire their eyes. Some colors will “vibrate” against each other and make the visual too difficult to read. Do not use blue on black. It looks out of focus and is hard to distinguish from each other. Do not use red and green together. Studies show that 7-9% of the male and 1-2% of the female population are color deficient which means they don’t see all colors. Colors red and orange are confused with green and yellow. If your visual is green with red text, some individuals would see only one color with each slide. Keep a consistent color scheme throughout your presentation. Consistent graphic elements should be linked from frame to frame. Titles should be the same color, similar data variables should be the same color, bullets should be the same color and so forth. Different medias project color differently. Film recorders, printers, video equipment and computer monitors interpret colors and show them differently. Consequently there may be a vast difference between the colors on your computer screen and your output device. Also, everyone sees colors differently. If color accuracy is critical, make test visuals and consult with those who will be imaging your slides or printing your poster.