The impact of signboard‐building color combinations on color harmony and legibility

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of signboard‐building color combinations on color harmony and legibility. Two hundred and three participants rated 54 signboard‐building color combinations against two scales of color harmony and legibility. In this article, the terms “brick,” “stone,” and “glass” refer to three types of building exteriors used in the experiment (ie, brick masonry, greystone, and curtain walls, respectively). Major findings are as follows: (a) there was a positive linear correlation between color harmony and legibility in all three types of building exteriors, (b) the type of building exterior affected the color harmony and legibility of signboard colors, (c) no hue‐related patterns were observed, (d) the effects of chroma differences on color harmony were weak and the effects of chroma differences on legibility were moderate, (e) the effects of lightness differences on color harmony and legibility were strong in brick, but the effects of lightness differences were weak in stone and glass, (f) white color combinations (ie, color pairs including white signboards) turned out to be the most harmonious and legible, and (g) color combinations of light signboards and dark buildings (negative polarity) were rated most harmonious and legible, with the exception of vivid red (positive polarity). The findings of this study provide insight into the characteristics of harmonious and legible colors in the context of signboard design.

Promoting Vernacularity in the City: Principles for Creating Livable Streets for People of Jordan

“…Some researchers have examined some of the aspects dealt with in this research. (Won, et al, 2020) studied the effect of colors and density on legibility. Regarding the effect of the number of signboard colors on color harmony, they did not include all factors and other variables of the signs.…”

“…It includes variables and their characteristics according to previous studies. These variables were distributed according to their relationship to the four principles of livability as evaluated and reached by the researchers before (Jiuan, 1984;Abu-Ghazzeh, 1996;Morris, 2001;Hashim, 2001;Coetzee, 2003;Zineddin et al, 2005;Mulyaningsih, et al, 2012;SANTOSA et al, 2013;Wilsona et al, 2015;PESZKO, 2016;Wilson & Casper, 2016;Kim & Park, 2020;Laskara et al, 2020;Won & Lee, 2020;Y He, et al, 2020).…”

Insights: Frontiers in Built Environment

“…Big data in the context of information technology has expanded the spatial and temporal dimensions of urban space, bringing an opportunity to refine urban planning and management, gradually moving from top-down control and adjustment of indicators to perceiving the city from the users' perspective, using open maps, streetscape images, virtual reality technology, and other means (Long and Tang, 2019). Won, Lee, and Park (Won et al, 2020) investigated the effect of colour combinations between shop signs and buildings on colour harmony and legibility; Zhong et al (Zhong et al, 2021) identified and extracted the dominant colours of urban buildings from street scene images and guided optimisation strategies. The study takes 'people' as the object of study, uses various measurement methods, uses 'subjective perceptions' as an intermediate medium and digitises them, uses statistics and analysis to investigate the correlation between the objective built environment and the subjective perceptions of users, and then translates the subjective perceptions into actionable aspects of the physical.…”

Design Element Preferences in Public Facilities: An Eye Tracking Study

“…Existing studies point out that in signage design, colors are more likely to achieve visual harmony when there is little chromaticity or a large difference in luminance [11]. Brightness differences have a stronger effect on harmony and legibility, while chromaticity has a lesser effect [15]. Different gender labels affect the degree of subjective preference for color and the response to the environment [16].…”