Choosing colours and fonts that still work in five years

Fashion is the enemy of recognition

Every few years design has a house style, and businesses that copy it wholesale look dated the moment it passes. The gradients of one era and the flat pastels of another are both timestamps.

Recognition is built by repetition. An identity you replace every three years never gets the chance to work. Choose something you can defend for a reason other than that it looks modern right now.

How many colours you actually need

Fewer than you think. One colour that’s unmistakably yours. One dark neutral for text. One light neutral for backgrounds. And one accent for the things people should click.

The mistake is picking five colours of equal weight, which means no colour ever gets associated with you. Pick one to own, and keep everything else quiet around it.

Contrast is not optional

This is where good-looking palettes fall apart in real use. Light grey text on white, or a mid-tone brand colour used for body text, is unreadable for a lot of people and looks washed out on any screen in sunlight.

Body text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 against its background. Free checkers will tell you in seconds. Do this before you sign off a palette, not after somebody complains.

It’s common for a brand colour to work on white but not on dark, or the other way round. The usual answer is two versions of the colour, one for each. That’s normal, not a compromise.

Two typefaces, chosen for different jobs

One for headings, one for body text, and maybe something small and distinctive for labels. More than three and the identity stops feeling deliberate.

The heading face can have personality, because it appears large and in short bursts. The body face should be almost invisible and easy to read at small sizes on a phone, which rules out most of the interesting ones.

Use a font people can actually license and install. A beautiful typeface nobody on your team can put in a document will be quietly replaced within a month.

Test it where it will actually be seen

Not on a designer’s big calibrated screen. On a mid-range phone, outdoors. On a printed invoice. On a WhatsApp profile picture at thumbnail size. On a vehicle from across the street.

Most identity problems are invisible in the presentation and obvious in the first week of real use.

A practical colour and type system

Most small businesses need less than they think. This is enough to be consistent everywhere.

Check that text on your colours is readable. The international accessibility standard asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 for normal text and 3 to 1 for large text, and free online contrast checkers will tell you in seconds.

Write the rules down

A one-page document with the colour values, the fonts and sizes, how much space goes around the logo, and two or three things never to do with it.

Without it, three people posting over six months will produce three different brands. It’s the cheapest part of the whole exercise and the part most often skipped.

What a logo can and can’t do on its own is covered in this guide, and our branding service delivers the rules alongside the marks.

Go further: the branding guide, our branding service, what a logo can do, or naming checks.

Questions people ask