What colours work?

If you can’t be seen you can’t be found, so your signage is critically important. I’m often asked – what colours work best for signage?

My answer is “Wherever possible the best approach is dark words on a light background.”  Then if there’s no requirement to stick to specific corporate colours, I’d use red on yellow as a first choice followed by red on white, black on white and so on.

If you want to see how well the red/yellow combination works have a look at the McDonalds and Shell signs and ask yourself “Did they just choose these colours by chance or for high visibility?” And, of course the answer is simple… they stand out like, well you complete the sentence!
I’m not keen on light words on a dark background but, sometimes it can work, and here is signage that really stands out and makes my rule look a bit shaky. However, I reckon the reason this works is because of the size of the signage… you’d have to try hard to miss it.