In my last column, I discussed making your text large enough to be legible so you're sure your audience can easily read your large-format marketing materials. Well, that's only one of many aspects to ensuring legibility in your marketing efforts. This month, learn how to maximize your target audience by building adequate contrast into your designs.

Tip 3: Use contrast to ensure maximum legibility.

There is a fragile eco-system at work whenever marketing material is distributed, whether large format or small. Your message, which should be the most important part of your marketing efforts, has to coexist with and more often than not subdue, other elements vying for a potential customer's attention. Depending on the piece, the message could be in the ring with the baddest of the bad, such as other imagery, the format of the piece, surrounding space, and even the typeface the message itself is rendered in. And that war rages on way before anyone important ever actually sees it.

When it is finally glimpsed, your message finds another challenge to contend with. You see, everyone sees color differently. Our perception of color can be affected by anything from our biology to simple things like our mood and diet. Many designers don't even consider the consequences of their color choices on marketing materials, and that leaves your message completely alone, with noone to notice it. After all, if something is difficult to see, people won't bother looking at it.

And so, controlling contrast on your marketing materials turns an ignored design into… Read the full article...

Tags: large format, design, contrast, ben lawless, 7 steps