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By Roger C. Parker

For marketing material, color is arguably one of the most powerful design tools at your disposal. It is extremely noticeable — even when viewed from a distance, a document with color stands out from black-and-white publications. Your publications will come to life with the appropriate application of color, and you can also use color to reinforce your organization's brand and identity. Adding a splash of color can give you a lot of bang for your marketing bucks.

Role of color in marketing

Color plays four major roles in increasing the communicating power of marketing materials for your business.

• Provides differentiation and recognition   Color helps your targeted audience recognize your marketing materials and also distinguishes your materials from your competitors' collateral. Color can also help you brand your marketing materials — by providing a signature look or style that is uniquely your own.
• Projects an image   Color influences the way that your readers perceive your message. All colors come with their own "emotional baggage," which can instantly reinforce — or undermine — your message. For example, certain images or elements in a range of colors have evoked associations from people such as "cool," "warm," "professional," "sterile," "tropics," "Art Deco," and "wartime."
• Creates selective emphasis   Color emphasizes your marketing messages and helps guide readers through your publications. You can also help ensure message retention with the judicious application of color. Readers are drawn to well-designed, color-enhanced text such as key phrases or headlines that are set apart in color. This selective emphasis helps reinforce significant elements in your messages.
• Organizes content   Color makes your publications more readable by helping the reader to intuitively understand the organization of your content. For example, by using alternating colored rows in a complex table or worksheet, you can help your readers focus on the information and single out the data that they need.

Colors that play nicely together

Although users can use most software programs to add colored text and graphic elements, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003 goes a step beyond by encouraging users to think in terms of groups or palettes of colors, as opposed to thinking in terms of individual colors.

To make it easy to choose colors that complement one another, Publisher includes defined color schemes to help simplify your color selection. (To find color schemes in Publisher, click Color Schemes on the Format menu.) Each color scheme contains five preselected colors that are designed to evoke a certain image, such as "Glacier," "Mist," or "Waterfall."

Thinking ahead: Colors for printed materials

When preparing files for commercial print jobs, avoid choosing colors based on how they appear on a computer monitor. On-screen colors usually bear little resemblance to printed colors.

Instead, assign colors from a color model based on the technology you will be using to duplicate your publication. Choosing a color model should be your first task when starting a new publication! You can choose from three major color models: RGB colors (RGB: A system that describes colors as a mixture of red (R), green (G), and blue (B). The color is defined as a set of three values (R,G,B). Using 0 (zero) percent of each color produces black; using 100 percent of all three colors produces white.), spot colors (spot color: Premixed color matched to a standard color guide, such as PANTONE.), and process colors (CYMK) (process colors: The four transparent inks (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) that are used in commercial printing to produce color photographic images and a wide range of solid colors.).

• RGB colors   Choose RGB colors if you are going to print your publication on a desktop printer or if you are going to take it to a commercial printer for digital print-on-demand duplication.
• Spot colors   Choose spot colors if you want to match a limited number of specific colors, for example, for logos or other branding elements as outlined in your corporate identity standards or guidelines. Many people choose from a color specimen or reference book. Separate volumes of these color books under the Pantone name can contain thousands of color options, which are available for use with coated (glossy) or uncoated (matte) paper. Printers rely on the numbers associated with each color specimen to create inks that exactly match your desired shade.
• Process colors   Process colors (CYMK) offer the most flexibility of the three major color options. Process colors are used for traditional four-color printing, where colors are mixed or assembled on the printing press from four basic inks: cyan, yellow, magenta, and black. Printers prepare four sets of printing plates for each page — one for each of these colors — to specify the amount of each color to be placed at different locations on each page.

Select a color model in Publisher

Guidelines for working with color

To use color effectively, follow these 12 simple rules.

1. Practice consistency   When incorporating color into your publications, use color judiciously and consistently. A few, well-chosen colors can have more impact than a rainbow of colors with little or no relationship to one another. For example, the more colors that you use, the less likely that your audience will identify your signature or brand with any one color.
2. Exercise restraint   A single word or key phrase set in color in a headline attracts more attention than when an entire headline is set in color. Similarly, when a color is applied to a single slice of a pie chart, for example, that slice stands apart from the rest of the chart that is not treated with color. By coloring only one element, you can more effectively convey the importance of specific information.
3. Use a single color palette or single color scheme   Limiting your color choices to the same five colors in every issue of your newsletter creates a consistent image, especially if your letterhead and business cards use the same five colors. The color schemes in Publisher 2003 can be set so that the schemes can be shared between publications, which ensures that your publications will be based on the same core color selections.
4. Consider two-color and three-color printing   When printing on high-quality offset printers — as opposed to digital print-on-demand duplication — consider the advantages of two-color and three-color printing. Without sacrificing visual impact, you can realize significant cost savings over the cost of traditional four-color, or CYMK, process printing.
5. Concentrate color, but don't dissipate it   Color works best when concentrated in a few focused areas, rather than scattered all over a page. Small areas of color spread over a page, such as in vertical rules or lines between columns, symbols placed at the ends of stories, or hanging caps, often add clutter to the page, rather than focusing attention or reinforcing branding. A smarter alternative is to limit color to areas where it can be used purposefully and effectively.
6. Incorporate colored text with care   Paradoxically, text set in color is often less effective — harder to notice and to read — than black text set against a white background. Be especially careful when using a colored serif font for body copy text. A better alternative is to limit colored text to bold, sans serif fonts such as 14-point or larger Arial Bold or Arial Black.
7. Strive for maximum contrast between the foreground and background   Black text against a white background is more readable than dark gray text against a light gray background or dark blue text against a light blue background. When using color to project an image, make sure that you are not inadvertently undermining the readability of your message.
8. Pay attention to color brightness levels   In printed material, text in darker colors is generally more legible than text in lighter colors. Text in yellow, light blue, or green that's on a white background, however, often looks better on screen than it does when it's printed.
9. Avoid reproducing black-and-white photographs in color   Images of food or people that are printed in blue or green are rarely satisfying. Notice that there is a difference between black-and-white photographs reproduced in blue or green, compared with the same photographs reproduced as a duotone. A duotone is a black-and-white photograph reproduced in shades of black plus shades of a second color. Duotones can be quite effective.
10. Consider readers who print publications on desktop printers   Use color sparingly if there is a possibility that your readers are going to print your brochure or newsletter on their desktop printers. Avoid large colored backgrounds and areas of heavy ink saturation, because these will waste a lot of your readers' toner and ink. Areas of nonfunctional, colored backgrounds that are repeated on each page are especially wasteful.
11. Use background bleeds when appropriate   If your project is going to be printed on an offset printer, consider adding background bleeds to pages that contain key visuals, such as charts and graphs. Bleeds are areas of color that extends slightly beyond the page edge (or trim). In publications that have a background bleed, the ink, instead of the paper color, becomes the "background color." You can then create "windows" to highlight text or graphics within the printed background color.
12. Monitor cultural connotations   When formatting publications for international audiences, consider any possible cultural implications. Colors can signify different things in different cultures. What may appear elegant and desirable to you may indicate death and sorrow to your prospects and clients! To find out more about cross-cultural issues associated with colors, refer to one of the numerous publications available on the topic.

Conclusion

The thoughtful use of color in your marketing material can have significant impact without adding unreasonably to your costs. Working effectively with color includes choosing the right software program — one that you can use to create and share color schemes selected according to the printing technology that you will use to duplicate your publications — as well as following a few basic color design guidelines.

About the author  Roger C. Parker is an author, speaker, and consultant who specializes in teaching individuals and firms how to profit from technological innovations. He has written 25 books and presented hundreds of design and marketing seminars throughout the United States and Australia.