Color contrast is one of the many visual design principles in UI/UX design. Here we are talking about contrast in the context of visual design and it is defined as a difference between two or more elements in a composition. But why does it matter so much? Why should you care about contrast during your UI/UX design process? We will find that out in this article.
In this article, we will discuss why color contrast is super important for User Interface designing and also learn how to create the best contrast for your UI. But before that let’s discuss some basic terms we should know as prerequisites.
Color Contrast in UI/UX Design
UI/UX Design
User interface (UI) is the visual or graphic elements a user interacts with in a platform. UI design is the process of creating the visual interfaces for a software application. User experience (UX) refers to the overall experience of a person using a product or service. Especially in terms of how simplistic and pleasing it is to use. UX design is the process of creating the experiences or the interactions that a user has with a product.
Visual Design Principles
Visual design principles are how the design elements like lines, shapes, color grids, etc. come together to create well-rounded and thoughtful visuals. The Interface Design takes advantage of these principles and drive engagement and increase usability.
There are mainly 10 types of visual design principles:
- Movement
- balance
- contrast
- proportion
- repetition
- rhythm
- variety
- emphasis
- harmony
- unity
Contrast
Contrast is a visual design principle where we try and differentiate one or more elements/visuals from others by differentiating them by help of colors, fonts, typography, repetition, alignment, or anything else. The idea is to make a particular element or visual to stand out to the users. In design terms – The visual design principle of contrast refers to the juxtaposition of two visually different elements. Contrast is when you notice the difference between two objects in the user interface and that difference emphasizes that they are different. This distinction might mean that they belong to different categories or have different functions or behave differently etc.
How to create Contrast
Here is a three step process to create color contrast:
Step 1: Choose a dominant color
The first step is to choose the dominant color that highlights the most imporant text/visual in the design. It might be possible that the company you work in or client you are working for might already have a color/brand color in mind. At that case step 1 is already done, but if you yourself have to choose the dominant color, research about what is the meaning of different colors.
For example, blue means trust, security, safety, peace and calmness. Purple means royalty, wealth and rich experience.
Step 2: Creating a palette of three colors
We already got our first color, we need 2 more colors that goes good with the dominant color. For this you can use tools like “mycolor.spaces” or you can even do it manually.
Step 3: Apply the 60/30/10 rule
Now that we have our 3 color palette ready, we can apply those colors to the user interface by the 60 – 30 – 10 rule. This rules basically means that 60% of a particular element in the background, 30% is the main element, and the 10% is the center of the element that we want to highlight or user’s attention.
Importance of Color Contrast in UI/UX design
Color Contrast is very important part of a good user interface. There are a few points that emphasize on how important color contrast is for UI/UX design:
- Psychology makes it important: Psychology says that we as humans are wired to focus on contrast. Our ability to quickly notice differences is what makes contrast so powerful. Contrast attracts attention. It draws the eye balls and it gets noticed. This helps us as a UI/UX designer to create a visual amalgamation of objects where we have a set pattern for what object the user should focus on and what elements to focus less on.
- Contrast creates emphasis and boundaries: By giving an element special characteristics that are visually different from the elements that surround it, we can create points of interest and emphasis in the user interface. But contrast does more than just attracting attention. It establishes boundaries between elements too.
- Differentiating between various segments: Contrast can also be used for differentiating between various segments in any web application design. When we go from a segment to another in a website. We can notice that the colors changes at the boundaries, this is to show that one segment or section of the application is over and another one starts from here. This helps in setting clear boundaries and improves user navigation.
- Contrast is beyond Primitive elements to create impact: Primitive features are .While these primitive features are the commonly used method to show contrast or even similarity, we can also make use of other methods that create a sense of pattern in the eyes of the user and the user is able to guess the next element coming.
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Contrast not just as color: There is more to contrast than just color. There are many types of contrast that can help you highlight your product in UI design. Other than color, there are
- Contrast by texture
- Contrast by shape
- Contrast by size
- Contrast by font
- Contrast by typography
- Contrast by alignment
- Contrast by pattern
- Contrast by background
- Contrast by spacing
- Contrast by Proximity
And much more. Contrast is about hooking the user to one particular element – a very crucial tool for a better user interface.
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Integral part of User Centered design: User Centered design is a series of processes or steps taken by the designers team in order to put the user at the center of the development of the product. With user centered design every decision is made keeping the user and the goals of the user in mind. User Centered design is a great way to ensure that whatever we are designing actually fits in with the goal of the average user and that way we are not going to spend resources designing things that the users actually don’t need.
Contrast plays central role in user central design. Contrast helps user identify which is the most important visual element/ object for him/her. It helps the user to navigate and not waste his/her time on other visuals.
Conclusion
So these are the ways in which contrast helps us create a better user interface and help set a hierarchy for content and visuals in our website. Contrast is a very useful visual design principle every UI/UX designer should get his/her hands dirty on. We hope that you got to know the importance of color contrast in UI/UX design and this article improved your understanding of color contrast.