Man! threads be droppin like flies yo! (Red and Black)

[Joe Diaz]

:Big Laugh Anyway, this isn't about threads closing, however I had a nice long reply typed up, because I was going to be nice and help someone out with their use of Red and Black in their design.

So Let's not dig up that, but instead let's talk about using Red and Black together in design.... again. Perhaps that person that was struggling might find this helpful.



It's all about contrast, boundaries and space. Do the squint test (squint your eyes while looking at your design) to see what reads the best. Since you don't get much higher contrast than back and white, the Black outline or contour that some signmakers put around Red lettering actually acts as the boundaries of the letters itself. Mistakenly people add these outlines/contours in an attempt to create visual appeal or in an attempt to make that lettering stand out, but what it actually does is make the letters look too fat. Take the top "normal" and the "worst" for example. In those examples, the center white areas of the "A", "R"s and the spaces on the "S" in addition to the spaces between the letters are swallowed up by the Black border, making that text extremely hard to read. The space between those letters are almost as important as the letters themselves.

I think some novice designers also mistakenly think Red is a bright color so they assume Red and Black have enough contrast, however if you were to take a design with Red in it down to grayscale, that Red would appear as a medium to dark gray. So just be mindful of contrast and negative space.

 

[mopar691]

This made me bust out laughing (and I agree).

I just sat down from finishing a 24' billboard with the customers name in 4' red letters with white space and a black outline (all on white, no clutter). I did advise on other colors or layout but they insisted as this is what was used in the past.

I would of loved to show them this simple graphic.

 

[bob]

It's all about contrast, boundaries and space. Do the squint test (squint your eyes while looking at your design) to see what reads the best. Since you don't get much higher contrast than back and white, the Black outline or contour that some signmakers put around Red lettering actually acts as the boundaries of the letters itself. Mistakenly people add these outlines/contours in an attempt to create visual appeal or in an attempt to make that lettering stand out, but what it actually does is make the letters look too fat. Take the top "normal" and the "worst" for example. In those examples, the center white areas of the "A", "R"s and the spaces on the "S" in addition to the spaces between the letters are swallowed up by the Black border, making that text extremely hard to read. The space between those letters are almost as important as the letters themselves...

What you say is true, sometimes.

First off, unless it's a paragraph of copy signs are not read in the same way you read a book. Rather items are seen and analyzed, patterns are recognized. In fact, the part of your brain that reads is not the part of your brain that sees patterns and analyzes. That's why a graph can instantly show trends and relationships that are incredibly difficult to recognize for tables of the very same data. I know this because I read and participated in number of studies on the subject as I labored for many a year on early graphical display systems on mainframes in an attempt to turn data, mountains of it, into usable information.

The example you labeled as 'worst' is in some applications is the best. It just depends.

Now putting red on a black field or vice versa is almost always a loser. For exactly the same reason that red shows as black on black and white film. Outlining one with the other and drop shadowing one with the other can be tasteless, but not necessarily an optical disaster. It just depends.

 

[2B]

Thanks Joe!

 

[Joe Diaz]

It doesn't matter if you are reading or "seeing patterns", you can't make out a pattern in the "worst" example (or at least it will take you much longer to make it out) because their isn't enough contrasting white space around the shapes/letters to tell what it is. In fact, what makes "worst" worst than "normal" is the white glow line which people mistakenly think separates the black and red enough to help it read better, but really it just makes the whole thing look blurry. You look at it from far away and it's a blob. Don't even click on the thumbnail and you can see that.

The same is true if you were to substitute the lettering with imagery of some kind. Take a clip art image of dog, apply the same contour treatment that was used on "worst", and the same thing happens. You see a blob from far away. If the point is to make your message easy to read, make out, or understand, "worst" will never be best.

 

[Gino]

I'm not sure if this is what bob was referring to, but distance is what will really determine if a certain color combination is fit for use.

As mopar was saying... any great distance.... almost all of the examples will be poor.
Using it in a brochure, just about any of them will work.

It all depends on how it's gonna be used.


You used the term grey scale. On a monochrome scale red will usually appear between 5 to 7, depending on the actual hue you choose.

My approach has always been this and this comes from more of a fine arts background, but can be used in a commercial media.......

Red is the brightest of all colors and catches our eye.... and our subliminal eye the fastest. The color red is about as vibrant a color as you can get in both the real world and the manufactured world. So, it's safe to say... red has a lot of vibrance to it. It's energetic and pulsating which causes it to have a sort of tension to our sight. This brightness of red causes it to move and catch our attention the fastest, then tends to make contrasting objects [letters included] appear blurry when up against almost any other color. However, some colors are worse than others. Certain blues, yellows, greens and sometime pastel colors will never work, unless you're trying to give someone a headache.........

 

[Joe Diaz]

I'm not sure if this is what bob was referring to, but distance is what will really determine if a certain color combination is fit for use.

As mopar was saying... any great distance.... almost all of the examples will be poor.
Using it in a brochure, just about any of them will work.

It all depends on how it's gonna be used.


You used the term grey scale. On a monochrome scale red will usually appear between 5 to 7, depending on the actual hue you choose.

My approach has always been this and this comes from more of a fine arts background, but can be used in a commercial media.......

Red is the brightest of all colors and catches our eye.... and our subliminal eye the fastest. The color red is about as vibrant a color as you can get in both the real world and the manufactured world. So, it's safe to say... red has a lot of vibrance to it. It's energetic and pulsating which causes it to have a sort of tension to our sight. This brightness of red causes it to move and catch our attention the fastest, then tends to make contrasting objects [letters included] appear blurry when up against almost any other color. However, some colors are worse than others. Certain blues, yellows, greens and sometime pastel colors will never work, unless you're trying to give someone a headache.........

Red is not the "brightest" of all colors. That's a misnomer. Also, I don't see "brightness" and "vibrant" as being the same thing. Yes Red is certainly a vibrant color (or it can be, there are some dull reds out there too), but most of the time it is not "bright". The best way to test the brightness and darkness of a color is to go to grayscale, If you were to take a C:0 M:100 Y:100 K:0 red, which in cmyk is a pretty darn vibrant red, and if you were to convert that to grayscale, you would have 76% black. Now that's a medium dark gray.

Now to get a bit more technical and the reason why the actual brightness of red is important, and I would argue is more important then the vibrancy of the color, you need to look at the human eye. Your eye has two types (actually now they have discovered a 3rd) of visual sensors in it called photoreceptor cell. Rods and Cones. Without diving too far into how our brains interpret light wavelengths using these sensors, long story short, Rods are extremely sensitive and are in greater numbers. Unlike Cones, Rods are NOT sensitive to color, but are very receptive to brightness and darkness. This is why in low-light, colors cannot be seen as well. So when dealing with contrast, really you are trying to stimulate those more sensitive Rods, I think this is why some are successful when they first design in black and white then add color.

The reason you get the visual vibration you are talking about when placing certain colors next to each other, is because their isn't enough contrast between them. You convert those colors to gray scale which would be like having total colorblindness, and those shades of gray that the colors have become would be extremely close shades of gray.

 

[Red Ball]

I am a simpleton. In my world, red don't touch black. I hate it. Bright orange ok.

 

[Joe Diaz]

As mopar was saying... any great distance.... almost all of the examples will be poor.
Using it in a brochure, just about any of them will work.

It all depends on how it's gonna be used.

Sure if you drive 300 miles away from a business card you won't be able to make out any of them. And If you sat right in front of a 50 ft tall sign, sure you could read them all.

But that's not the point. the point is that one example is easier to read or understand, than the other. Up close, sure they all can be read, but if you started with the "best" or "ultimate" examples, the farther you back up, you will notice that "worst" and "normal" become harder to read while "best" and "ultimate" are clearer.

So if you had the choice to use the more legible design vs the one that was completely illegible from a distance, why would you use the former?

 

[bob]

Red is not the "brightest" of all colors....

Depends on what you mean by 'bright'. Bright being one of those words people use but really have no idea of just what they're talking about.

Red, the bottom of the visible spectrum has the lowest energy per photon of that spectrum. The energy per photon is proportional to the frequency of the light...

E = h*f

Where f is the frequency and h is, I believe, Planck's constant or approximately 6.626E-34 Joule-seconds.

What does this mean? Simply that by being on the low end of the spectrum red is most likely either the easiest or the most difficult color to see, depending on just which theory to which you subscribe. I go with the easiest for a number of reasons, the explanations for which cause most people's eyes to roll back into their heads and to begin drooling foam.

 

[TwoNine]

Well....Yeah. If you're gonna break it into Phlank's constants and Joule-Seconds...Sure.

 

[Vinylman]

Depends on what you mean by 'easiest'. Easiest being one of those words people use but really have no idea of just what they're talking about.

Example:
What is easiest?
For an ant to pick up and move any given distance a piece of material that is 50 times its' own weight, OR for an average man to comprehend the excruciating ramblings of bob?




Question: How Can Ants Lift Objects 50 Times Their Body Weight?
Watch ants for any length of time, and you'll witness some remarkable feats of strength. Tiny ants, marching in lines, will haul food, grains of sand, and even small pebbles back to their colonies. It's true that ants can lift objects 50 times their own body weight. Why are ants so strong?



The real strength of an ant, or any insect for that matter, lies in its diminutive size. Generally speaking, the smaller the critter, the stronger it will be. It's physics, plain and simple.
First, you need to understand a few basic measurements of size, mass, and strength:

• The strength of a muscle is proportional to the surface area of its cross section.
• Surface area is a two-dimensional measurement, and is proportional to the square of its length.
• Volume is a three-dimensional measurement, and is proportional to the cube of its length.

An animal's weight is related to volume, which increases in proportion to the cube of its length, or by a factor of 3. But its strength is related to surface area, which only increases in proportion to the square of its length, or by a factor of 2. Larger animals have a greater disparity between mass and strength. When a large animal needs to lift an object, its muscles must also move a greater volume, or mass, of its own body.
The tiny ant has a strength advantage because of the ratio of surface area to volume. An ant need only lift a small measure of its own weight relative to the strength of its muscles.


Listening to bob? NOW THAT'S PRICELESS!:ROFLMAO:

 

[bob]

Example:
What is easiest?
For an ant to pick up and move any given distance a piece of material that is 50 times its' own weight, OR for an average man to comprehend the excruciating ramblings of bob?

...mediocre explanation of what is popularly known as the square/cube law mercifully deleted.

That entire bit of rambling can be summed up by the fact that area varies on the square and mass varies on the cube.

It's the reason big cats have legs and feet out of proportion to their smaller house cat cousins. The cat might be 2 times the size but it's mass is 4 times that of the smaller specimen. Ergo the support structure, feet and legs, must be 4 times larger not just twice as large in order to support the mass of the animal.

You'll probably find that as confounding as the physics of light.

 

[Mosh]

Mind if I steal that fror a shop display?

 

[TheSnowman]

Based on Joe's stuff...I'm gonna go with the theory of whatever he says is absolutely right.

 

[JR's]

I always wondered why my clients like red and black for the layouts.
I explained to them that it's not a good combination. They would tell me that they see it all the time.
Or it's their favorite combination.
So I did some research to see where they're seeing it all the time. It is a couple examples I grabbed from the Internet of companies that use red and black on their logo/layouts.

This way I could see how other designers handle this problem. And I am sure that there design budget was a lot bigger then Joe's carpentry.


JR Joe

 

[Joe Diaz]

Yeah and it's not that Red and Black can't be used together. I use them together all the time. You just need to keep things like contrast in mind, and realize that red isn't a lighter color. Those examples you posted. Some of them I think work great, some not much. Look how much clearer Lego and Netflix and Monopoly is compared to ESPN, UFC and Ring Pop.

The way I like to design, and this is just me, is to design in black and white first. When I start adding colors I would substitute my white with brighter or light value colors... colors like white, creams, yellows, bright oranges, real bright greens, Etc... And Black with darker colors like black, dark grays, dark navy blues, dark forest greens, dark browns, and maybe even real dark reds. Then I mix in supporting colors. medium color values like bright reds, grass greens, dark oranges, etc... I'm careful not to make those colors interfere with the high contrasting light and dark colors.

I know that there is a color visibility chart that someone developed years ago that is great for things like highway signs. If I remember right, Black on Yellow than Black on White are the highest rated color combos when it comes to visibility.

 

[Terremoto]

I know that there is a color visibility chart that someone developed years ago that is great for things like highway signs. If I remember right, Black on Yellow than Black on White are the highest rated color combos when it comes to visibility.

I've got that chart in a book at home (some book from Signs of the Times I think). If I recall correctly you're right about the Black on Yellow then the Black on White.

Dan

 

[mopar691]

This Chart?

 

[Vinylman]

That entire bit of rambling can be summed up by the fact that area varies on the square and mass varies on the cube.

It's the reason big cats have legs and feet out of proportion to their smaller house cat cousins. The cat might be 2 times the size but it's mass is 4 times that of the smaller specimen. Ergo the support structure, feet and legs, must be 4 times larger not just twice as large in order to support the mass of the animal.

You'll probably find that as confounding as the physics of light.

:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:


SEE! I tried to warn you all.:ROFLMAO: