11
2.6
Use Color! But Don’t Abuse!
For the first few decades of television, screens were ‘black and white’, and yet,
viewers enjoyed watching movies, shows and the news. Even this book, which uses
greyscale for many illustrations, still manages to convey useful information (hopefully). But this being said, color is a great thing, especially for presentations! Colors
should be used, for instance, to:
• Distinguish categories of data in graphs (Sects. 6.4, 6.6 and 6.12)
• Better link graph legends to datasets, using text of the same color as data
(Sect. 6.6)
• Distinguish values in a table (e.g. negative values in red, positive values in green)
• Highlight good vs. bad results (green vs. red again)
• Emphasize some specific text (warnings, critical results and conclusions)
Images and photographs in colors are of course richer. And colors make slides
more appealing, which is critical to maintain interest from your audience.
But one should not abuse color. You should not use color unless color really
brings a tangible benefit. For instance, stick to black font, unless colored text really
conveys something specific. But use white text on top of dark-colored surfaces.
Just don’t use color for the sake of using color. Too much color might just mean
too much distraction. Let color be useful… or stick to black and white!
2 Basics
2.6
Use Color! But Don’t Abuse!
For the first few decades of television, screens were ‘black and white’, and yet,
viewers enjoyed watching movies, shows and the news. Even this book, which uses
greyscale for many illustrations, still manages to convey useful information (hopefully). But this being said, color is a great thing, especially for presentations! Colors
should be used, for instance, to:
• Distinguish categories of data in graphs (Sects. 6.4, 6.6 and 6.12)
• Better link graph legends to datasets, using text of the same color as data
(Sect. 6.6)
• Distinguish values in a table (e.g. negative values in red, positive values in green)
• Highlight good vs. bad results (green vs. red again)
• Emphasize some specific text (warnings, critical results and conclusions)
Images and photographs in colors are of course richer. And colors make slides
more appealing, which is critical to maintain interest from your audience.
But one should not abuse color. You should not use color unless color really
brings a tangible benefit. For instance, stick to black font, unless colored text really
conveys something specific. But use white text on top of dark-colored surfaces.
Just don’t use color for the sake of using color. Too much color might just mean
too much distraction. Let color be useful… or stick to black and white!
2 Basics