The 60-30-10 Colour Rule - How to Use it in Your Graphic Designs

Did you know that nearly 93% of customers rely their purchasing decisions on colour and visual appeal? This is why selecting the appropriate colours for your logo, brand, and marketing materials is critical. 

Colour is one of the most-memorable parts of your brand, and it can have a massive impact on how it is perceived. When you choose colours to represent your business and use them consistently over time, your brand will become connected with those hues.

Choosing the right colours for your user interface and efficiently implementing them might be tricky. Colours that complement each other and provide a sense of harmony in the design are ideal. You'll also want to use accent colours to draw attention to features like buttons and call-to-actions.

The 60-30-10 Rule in Graphic Design

The 60-30-10 rule is simple. Your dominant colour is 60% of your design, your secondary colour is 30%, and your accent colour is 10%.

This rule will assist you in creating a well-balanced color scheme for your design. The goal is to devote 60% of the palette to one hue (typically a neutral), 30% to another colour (complimentary), and 10% to a third colour (accent).

This works because it creates a sense of harmony and allows the eye to shift from one focal point to the next with ease.

So, how can you put the 60-30-10 rule into practice in your graphic designs? Backgrounds, colour blocking, and significant text areas should be done in your primary colour (60 %). For headers, sidebars, highlighting, and text callouts, use your secondary colour (30%). Then, using your accent colour (10%), which is usually your brightest hue, direct the reader to take a specific action. Use it to bring attention to call-to-action areas, buttons, and links.

If you don't want to follow the 60-30-10 rule in graphic design, though, it's usually better to utilize one or two colours rather than a lot of them.

When you employ too many colours, you're communicating too many emotions or messages at once. It might confuse your customers.

In general, brands that offer a diverse range of products and services or reflect diversity and inclusiveness, such as Google, Windows, the Olympic Games, or eBay, utilize multicoloured logos. Your logo should be avoided using numerous colors unless your brand has similar characteristics.

Colour Mistakes to Avoid

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1. Combining light colours 

If you're going to include text in your presentation, contrast the text with the background color to make it readable. Although two light colours appear lovely together, they aren't often highly legible.

2. Combining bright colours 

Viewers will struggle to see colorful text on top of a bright background, just as they will struggle to read content with two light hues. It pops even more when bright text is written over a light backdrop color. The same can be said of dark text.

3. Vibrating colours

When two bright, highly saturated colours are combined, the lines between them blur and blend, giving the impression that the colors are "vibrating." This can give someone trying to read the letters a headache, but it may be considerably more difficult for persons with colour blindness, who may not be able to read the text at all. Colour blindness manifests itself in various ways, but it is generally preferable to avoid very contrasted hues.

4. Patterns behind texts

For your text to be legible, it must stand out from its background. Avoid using busy, contrasting visuals in your background that may cause your text to get lost. Choose a plain, solid-colour background instead. If you really must employ graphics, reduce the opacity so that the text can stand out.

5. Neon colours

While neon hues are eye-catching, utilizing them excessively can irritate and fatigue your viewers. Neons should only be used sparingly or as highlights in your designs.

Conclusion 

Colour is an essential aspect of web design and should be thoroughly considered. Colour and brand identification are closely intertwined, and the colour choices you make can impact how potential customers perceive your company.

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The 60-30-10 guideline can help you create a well-balanced interface design by harmonizing your colour scheme. So if you're planning to create stunning designs apply this rule, and you can't go wrong with it. 

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