A consistent, easily-identifiable color palette is a key ingredient for every major brand around the world.
Our Illini Orange and Illini Blue colors have been carefully chosen with accessibility (both for print and web) and differentiation in mind. While most non-designers in the world will simply see orange and blue, lots of testing, tweaking and strategic thought led to this specific palette.
Primary Colors
The strategy for the new visual identity involves leaning more heavily into orange — the color that most differentiates us from competing universities.
Together, the combination of Illini Orange and Illini Blue should make up 75-85 percent visual prominence, in terms of color use on a given piece.
Illini Orange
PMS 1655
CMYK 0/80/100/0
RGB 255/95/5
HEX #FF5F05
- Altgeld #C84113
Illini Blue
PMS 2767
CMYK 100/90/10/50
RGB 19/41/75
HEX #13294B
Secondary Colors
The supporting palette of colors was chosen to work well with the primary Illini Orange and Illini Blue, without competing with them.
Supporting colors offer design flexibility and usability (especially on web applications), while maintaining an overall look that reads orange and blue. Using any colors other than the those chosen for the brand palette detracts from the brand consistency we need to establish.
Alma Mater
PMS 661C
CMYK 100/85/15/7
RGB 30/56/119
HEX #1E3877
- #4D69A0
- #849BC1
- #AFC7DB
Industrial Blue
PMS 285C
CMYK 90/48/0/0
RGB 29/88/167
HEX #1D58A7
- #5783BC
- #90AED5
- #CAD9EF
Arches Blue
PMS 298C
CMYK 70/5/2/0
RGB 0/159/212
HEX #009FD4
- #7FC3E1
- #A6D7EB
- #D2EBF5
Cloud
PMS COOL GRAY 1C
CMYK 3/2/2/1
RGB 248/250/252
HEX #F8FAFC
- #E8E9EB
- #DDDEDE
- #D2D2D2
Heritage Orange
PMS 715C
CMYK 0/57/94/00
RGB 245/130/30
HEX #F5821E
- #E56E15
- #CE5E11
- #B74D04
Color accessibility on the web
Accessible content is not just “nice to have,” it is a baseline requirement for everything we create. We adhere to WCAG AA standards for all of our online communications.
To make choosing accessible colors easy, we have created this chart showing the accessible and non-accessible combinations of our primary and secondary color palette as applied to large text (24px and larger, 19px bold and larger), small text (23.9px and smaller, 18.9px bold and smaller) and graphic elements.
| FF5F05 | 13294B | C84113 | F5821E | 009FD4 | 1D58A7 | 1E3877 | F8FAFC | FFFFFF | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FF5F05 | Fail | Pass | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Large/bold text only | Fail | Large/bold text only |
| 13294B | Pass | Fail | Fail | Pass | Pass | Fail | Fail | Pass | Pass |
| C84113 | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Pass | Pass |
| F5821E | Fail | Pass | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Large/bold text only | Fail | Fail |
| 009FD4 | Fail | Pass | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Large/bold text only | Fail | Large/bold text only |
| 1D58A7 | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Fail | Pass | Pass |
| 1E3877 | Large/bold text only | Fail | Fail | Large/bold text only | Large/bold text only | Fail | Fail | Pass | Pass |
| F8FAFC | Fail | Pass | Pass | Fail | Fail | Pass | Pass | Fail | Fail |
| FFFFFF | Large/bold text only | Pass | Pass | Fail | Large/bold text only | Pass | Pass | Fail | Fail |
- Pass
- Color pairing can be used any time
- Large/bold text only
- Color pairing can only be used on large text and graphic elements
- Fail
- Color pairing is not accessible