The Art and Science of Color: A Guide for Nonprofit STEM Education Reports
Welcome back to our two-part series on The Art and Science of Color! Last month, we talked about the importance of color usage and its impact on five key areas:
Emotion and perception
Consistent branding
Calling attention to important information
Easing readers’ cognitive load
Maximizing human memory performance
This month, we will discuss how to find the right colors to use in your reports and data visualizations, and some practical applications for your organization. We will explore how creating a style guide can help keep your branding consistent and engaging, where to use color in your reports, and how to easily customize charts and graphs.
I’m Not a Creative, but I Need Consistent Branding. Now What?
A great first step in finding the right colors is to put together a style guide. A style guide is a set of guidelines that outline your nonprofit's core colors, typography, and other visual elements. By creating a style guide, you can ensure that your report is consistent with your organization's overall branding.
If you do not have a style guide already developed, you might start by identifying colors that speak to your nonprofit’s brand. Perhaps colors you use in your logo or on your website.
Next, you can identify the RGB and HEX color codes for your core colors. RGB and HEX codes are digital color codes that can be used to match specific colors on computers and other digital devices. You can use an eyedropper tool to easily find the codes for colors in your existing materials or website.
When it comes to selecting colors for your report, it's also important to consider color combinations. Using complementary colors can create visual interest and make your report more dynamic. One easy way to find complementary colors is to use a color palette generator like Coolors.
A critical aspect to consider when working with color schemes is accessibility. People with various forms of color blindness may struggle to tell apart different hues. By using contrasting colors and patterns, you can make sure that your report is still legible and easy to understand for those who have difficulty seeing certain colors. Try out this color picker tool from Coolors, and click on the glasses icon to see how your color palette will look to people with different versions of color blindness.
Where to Incorporate Color into Your Report’s Design
You have your colors picked, and a great style guide in place - congratulations! Now let’s discuss where to use custom colors in your reports.
One key way to use custom colors in your report is by incorporating them into photos. There are some stock images sites (such as Stocksy, Adobe, etc.) that allow you to search for photos that match your custom colors. Once you’ve found photos that fit your theme and color palette, use them to add visual interest and break up text-heavy sections of your report. Here is an example of how to use this tool on Stocksy.com:
Type in your Hex color code to select the color you want to use, and hit “Enter”:
This will populate results that specifically match that color code. Then just browse the results to find a photo that fits with your report!
Custom colors can also be used in charts, graphics, and other data visualizations to make the information more easily understood. By color-coding different data points or categories, you can make your report more engaging and easier for readers to understand the information and identify patterns or trends. Here’s an example:
You can also use custom colors in section headers of your reports to create a visual hierarchy and make it easy for readers to navigate the text. By using different colors for different sections, you can make sure that readers know where to find the information they're looking for.
Using popular software like Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, or Google Slides, Docs, and Sheets, you can easily customize the colors in your reports. By learning how to change the colors in these programs, you can make sure that your report is consistent with your nonprofit's branding and visually appealing. In any of these programs, simply select the object or text color box and enter the HEX code of the color you wish to use under “custom.” Below is an example of how to use this tool in Google Forms:
It is clear that color plays a critical role in reader comprehension and learning. By understanding the emotions and associations associated with different colors, and by using color consistently and impactfully throughout your report, you can enhance the visual impact of your report, and make it more effective in communicating important information to your audience.
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