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A print guy in Baltimore told me to drop my accent color to 10 percent. My whole palette clicked.
I was building a brand palette for a coffee shop and had five colors all fighting for attention. A prepress guy named Dave in Baltimore looked at my swatches and said, keep the accent under 10 percent of the layout or it stops being an accent. I tried it on the menus and signage mocks and suddenly the cream background and deep brown did all the work. Two colors carried the whole thing while the orange just popped in small spots. Now I want to know, do you all cap your accent usage or just eyeball it?
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logan_schmidt10h ago
Heard a guy on a design podcast say the same thing, that a real accent should feel like a treat, not a meal. Ten percent sounds about right when you actually do the math on a layout. Small logos, buttons, a stripe on the cup sleeve, that kind of thing. Once the orange starts showing up everywhere it just turns into another base color and the whole thing goes flat.
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