Process
3 issues tagged with this topic.
The case for limiting your palette to five colors
Unlimited color freedom produces worse palettes than deliberate constraint. The five-color ceiling is not an aesthetic preference — it is a cognitive and systems design limit. Understanding why the constraint works makes it easier to apply and defend in team settings.
Color naming is a systems design decision, not a branding exercise
How you name colors in a design system determines how teams reason about them, how documentation stays current, and how onboarding scales. Semantic names age well; descriptive names create maintenance debt. The naming strategy you choose in week one will shape token discussions for years.
How many colors does a palette actually need? The case for hue span constraints
Most product palettes are over-specified — too many hues, too many lightness variants, too many one-off accent colors. Understanding hue span as a design constraint produces palettes that are both more coherent and easier to use across a whole product.