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Logo color palette and contrast (Re: Vote for team logo)



Hi Gavin,

On Sat, 19 Apr 2025 17:46:52 +0100
Gavin Henry <ghenry@sentrypeer.org> wrote:

> It would be good to have the Rust orange and Debian pink/red I'd say.
> If that works.

Thanks for the suggestion. It's indeed nice if the logo is more
colorful. However, I'm worried about the contrast:

[Debian red] as in the official logo SVG file is #A80030.

The "Rust orange" (I assume you mean the one in the [rust-artwork]
repo) is around #7F4426 (the original is a gradient, I randomly picked
a point with this value).

As the logo design goes, the Debian swirl is going to be red in the
foreground, the cog orange and background.

With contrast calculators from [Figma] and [WebAIM],

The above values result in a contrast score of 1.02:1, so poor that
it's practically an indistinguishable blob of colors. Fails all WCAG
levels, obviously.

That said, pitch black (i.e. #000000) as I originally imagined isn't
much better: its score is lifted to merely 2.71:1. A bit more readable
for people with good visuals, but too dark. Still fails all WCAG levels.

If we consider the alternative, PANTONE 199 C, #D50032, it's 1.41:1 on
Rust orange, not much better, but on pitch black it's 3.88:1 and passes
WCAG AA for Large text and UI elements, but not AAA, nor AA for Normal
text.

If we again consider another alternative, PANTONE Strong Red C or Rubine
Red C, #CE0056 or #CE0058 respectively, it's 1.36 on Rust orange, and
3.76 on pitch black. WCAG results are the same as 199 C.

Based on these results, I think we can't use "Rust orange" in the logo,
unless we figure out how to make the two near colors distinguishable.

Based on these scores, PANTONE 199 C on pitch black is the best palette
in terms of contrast.

[Debian red]: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianLogo
[rust-artwork]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-artwork/blob/master/logo/rust-logo-256x256.png
[Figma]: https://www.figma.com/color-contrast-checker/
[WebAIM]: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

-- 
??    ,Sdrager
Blair Noctis

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