The Role of Colors in PDF Design

Colors play a vital role in design, influencing how the reader perceives and interacts with visual content. In PDF design, as with any visual medium, color choices are not just aesthetic decisions, they are strategic tools that guide attention, evoke emotions, and communicate meaning.

Expressa simplifies the integration of colors into your designs with tools that support cohesive and effective color schemes, ensuring your final output is professional and visually engaging. Keep reading this guide to learn more about colors and color schemes and how to use them to your advantage in Expressa.

Understanding the Role of Colors in Design

Psychological Impact

Colors have a significant psychological effect on viewers. Warm tones like red, orange, and yellow can evoke feelings of energy, passion, and warmth, while cool tones like blue and green promote calmness, trust, and balance.

Visual Hierarchy and Focus

Strategic use of color enhances visual hierarchy by directing the viewer’s eye to key elements. For instance, headers in a bold contrasting color immediately draw attention, while subdued tones for background elements reduce distractions. (Learn more about headers and footers in Expressa here)

Brand Identity

Colors are integral to brand identity. Consistently using brand colors across different formats and types of branding strengthens identity and instills trust in the reader and/or overall target audience.

Choosing Effective Color Schemes

An effective color scheme is balanced, complementary, and aligned with the intended purpose of your design. Below are common types of color schemes:

Monochromatic Schemes

Monochromatic schemes use variations of a single color. They create a clean, cohesive look that’s easy to manage and ideal for minimalist designs.

Complementary Schemes

Complementary schemes use colors opposite each other on the color wheel, such as blue and orange. This contrast draws attention to elements. For instance, typography in a color that is opposite on the color wheel from the color of the background will immediately stand out.

Analogous Schemes

Analogous schemes feature colors next to each other on the color wheel, take for example a combination of three colors such as green, blue-green, and blue. These schemes create harmony and are well-suited for designs that aim to feel natural and cohesive.

Triadic Schemes

Triadic schemes use three evenly spaced colors on the color wheel. They provide vibrancy, ideal for creative designs. Combine, for example, green, orange and a purple color to create a unique triadic scheme.

Applying Color in Expressa

Expressa makes it easy to implement and manage color schemes in your designs. The intuitive color picker provides access to a broad spectrum of hues, tints, and shades. There is also a selection of preset color swatches that you can choose from.

Every element’s color can be easily changed in its options, which will appear in the panel on the right once you have clicked on any chosen element. There you will find the current color which you can click on and change, if not, that element’s color, or rather background color, can be changed by switching on the “background color” option.

Here you’ll see a HSL (hue, saturation, lightness) color picker. The color square is a saturation (intensity of the color) and lightness (brightness) selector, and the bottom gradient bar is a hue slider (hue - the pure color, e.g., yellow, red). Moving your cursor across this bottom slider changes the base color. Moving horizontally on the color square changes saturation (vivid to dull), and moving vertically changes lightness (dark to bright). If you have already chosen a specific hexadecimal (HEX) color code for an element in your design, you can enter it in the color code field.

Using Gradients in Expressa

If you want to implement a gradient, switch on “background gradient“ in the options. Select the gradient direction (e.g., "left to right") from the dropdown menu to control how the gradient flows. Set the gradient colors with the color picker or enter HEX color codes. The percentage next to each color (e.g., 0% for black and 100% for white) controls the position of each color in the gradient. Drag or adjust these values to refine the transition. Use the "+" to add a new color stop for more customization or the trash icon to remove an existing one.

Keep gradients simple by using two complementary or analogous colors, which we explained earlier, for a smooth transition. Ensure they enhance readability by avoiding harsh contrasts and testing how text or elements appear on top of them.

Pro tip: Almost always avoid using more than 3-5 colors in a singular design as it can be overwhelming and seem unprofessional to the reader, drawing attention away from the intended message of the design.

Remember that color is more than a visual element, it’s a tool for communication, branding, and more.