schooltool-developers team mailing list archive

[Tom Hoffman <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

 Sent to you by Tom Hoffman via Google Reader: Some guidelines for warm
grey text on the web via Canonical Design by Inayaili León on 1/26/12

Warm grey is one of the neutral colours from Ubuntu and Canonical’s
colour palette. It has been added to the palette for balance, being a
bridge between the vibrant orange and aubergine.

The brand guidelines specify that warm grey (hex value: #AEA79F) can be
used for: backgrounds, graphics, pictograms, dot patterns, charts and
diagrams, and large size text.

Even though its use has been tried and tested on some of our print
design materials, we are still finding the best way of applying it on
the screen, with accessibility considerations in particular being
something we want to get right.


Warm grey used in a brochure spread and diagrams

I made a quick example of warm grey text on white and buttons with
white text on warm grey and showed it to the Ubuntu accessibility team,
who promptly gave me some feedback.


Example used to showcase warm grey text on white and white text on warm
grey

Here are the conclusions of this discussion, and what we will now try
to follow as a rule:

- Warm grey is easier to read on white and at larger sizes, such as
24-36px
- It can be used for short, less important pieces of information (for
example the date or author of a post or news piece below the main
title)
- It can also be used in buttons that are deactivated and therefore
less relevant
Guidelines can change though. If something doesn’t evolve, or is at
least reassessed at certain intervals of time, it can very easily
stagnate. So we will test these conclusions and follow these simple
rules for now, knowing that later on we may decide there is a better
way of achieving the same results.

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