Communicating Research: Poster Design

Colours can draw attention, and can be used to label and show relationships (e.g. compare / contrast). 

It is recommended that you use a colour palette of up to 3 colours (a primary colour, a secondary colour, and an accent colour).

A basic understanding of colour theory can help you decide on the best colour combination. 

Using the right colours and contrasts can enhance the effectiveness of your data visualisations. Three colour schemes that can be used for impactful data visualisations are:

1. Sequential 
2. Divergent 
3. Categorical

This video provides a brief introduction to these colour schemes and highlights common misuse of colour.

   

For a more comprehensive presentation on colours, watch this video below. 

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Suitable Tool for Beginners: Data Visualization Color Picker

Generate single scale (sequential), divergent scale and multi-colour (categorical) palettes for your charts and graphs with the Data Visualization Color Picker tool .

Features include previews of how your palette would look like on different charts or graphs, and a detailed "How To Use" guide for each colour scheme. More information in the video below:

If you are unsure which colour combinations may be suitable for your poster, try using an online colour palette generator.

• Adobe Color - https://color.adobe.com/create
• Color Hunt - https://colorhunt.co/
• ColorSpace - https://mycolor.space
• Coolors - https://coolors.co (Suitable for beginners, details below)
• Culrs - https://www.culrs.com/
• Paletton - http://paletton.com/

Features in these tools include generating of random palettes, options to generate palettes based on colour harmony and lists of trending colour palettes.

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Suitable Tool for Beginners: Coolors

Coolors is a tool that we found to be most suitable for beginners. In addition to generating colour palettes, these features on Coolors can help you improve accessibility of your poster:

• Contrast Checker - Calculates the contrast ratio of text and background colours, follows the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• Color Blindness - a visualisation of how people with colour blindness will see your palette

Watch this video for a quick introduction to Coolors and its features. 

• Keep the background light coloured and simple.
• When using a dark background, you will need to use a light coloured text to create sufficient contrast. In general, it is more tiring for the eyes to read a poster with white text on a dark background.
• For the same reason above, avoid a distracting background.