Resources

Colors

When you think Target, you see red. When you think John Deere, you see green. When you think UPS, you see brown. Great brands understand the power of color. It can become a trigger and identifier for a brand.

Official UCCS Campus Colors

• UCCS has two primary colors: black and gold.
• UCCS also has a highlight color: blue. It’s important to note, blue should only be used as an accent or highlight, NEVER as a primary color.

UCCS Gold	Pantone	CMYK	RGB	Web
	PMS 130	C: 0  M: 30 Y: 100 K: 0	R: 250 G: 172 B: 0	#faac00
UCCS Black	Pantone	CMYK	RGB	Web
	PMS Black	C: 0  M: 0 Y: 0 K: 100	R: 0 G: 0 B: 0	#000000
UCCS Blue	Pantone	CMYK	RGB	Web
	PMS 279	C: 69 M: 34 Y: 0 K: 0	R: 83 G: 125 B: 185	#557bc1

The official UCCS colors are Black and Gold. UCCS also has a Blue accent. Together, these colors are the foundation for all marketing materials. In short, when people see black and gold with a touch of blue, they should immediately think UCCS.

Common Usage

Common uses of our official school colors are:

• Gold text and elements on a black background.
• Blue text on a white background (sparingly).

Please see the Graphic Elements / Examples section for more.

We generally recommend against using the following:

• gold as a background color, especially white text on gold, though we recommend against black on gold as well.
• blue on black or gold
• gold on blue or white
• heavy uses of blue

Rule of thumb: our colors are black and gold with a minor highlight of blue. They're not, for example, "blue and yellow." Take a look at your usage of color and imagine how someone would describe it. The goal is to use our colors so that anyone would describe them as we do; black and gold with a minor blue highlight.

Complementary Colors

In addition to the official UCCS school colors, we will be designating a host of complementary colors that can be used when creating marketing materials. (A "supporting cast" of colors.) This will help ensure all pieces look like they are from the same family, and eliminate the chances of disastrous color choices such as black, gold, blue with fluorescent pink and green.

Check back often to see what new colors are being added.

Use a DIY Color Scheme

Let's assume that you know the primary UCCS colors are Black and Gold, and you know the main photograph or artwork you're going to use on your piece, and that they look nice next to each other. A common technique is to use colors from the photograph or artwork to build your palette.

Take the fictional brochure example to the right. Colors for the text and text box on the right are pulled from the image used on the left. They do not replace the UCCS school colors, but can be used along side so long as they fit nicely. Use your best judgement.

Tools like the Big Huge Labs "Palette Generator" can be very helpful in this process.