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Quick Tip:
How to Save Your Client’s Budget on Color Work

Four-color design looks great, but it’s expensive to produce … and sometimes it’s just not in your client’s budget. An easy way to save money – as much as half – and still have an eye-catching design is to design with two colors.

You can improve the visual impact of two colors by using tint variations on both of them. If you’re not sure where to find tint features in your layout program, go to the Help menu and request “tints.”

I work in InDesign and can change tints in the swatches box. InDesign allows a wide degree of tinting, which makes a single color look like many. The tints often look so different, it’s hard to believe they came from the same color.

Many guides say that when working in two colors, you should use black as the base color along with one accent color. But I’ve also used very dark blues, greens, and purples as base colors … and my clients loved it.

Between two contrasting colors and their array of tints, you have a wide color palette at your fingertips … for a lot less than the cost of four-color work.

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Published: March 8, 2007

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