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(First post, yay!) Im working on a fashion lookbook for print and I'm displaying product colours on a black background, but what can I do for when I need to display black on black? Example:

Example

As you can see there are 3 colours but the black is not legible on black, what do you reckon I could do to improve visibility without compromising design too much? I cant change the black background FYI. The black dot in the picture isn't quite Black (#000000) its actually #20201f which I thought would help but when we did a test print it was basically invisible.

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    By the way, welcome to GDSE!
    – Circle B
    Jul 23, 2014 at 15:09
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    Odd. It took me a long time time to figure out what you were talking about as the third circle was perfectly visible to me.
    – Joshua
    Jul 23, 2014 at 19:04
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    @Joshua Yeah its visible on desktop but as printers don't have as many colours its basically invisible
    – BoneStarr
    Jul 24, 2014 at 11:14

3 Answers 3

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Here are a couple of things you could do...

Stroke the black:

enter image description here

Use an outer Glow, this may not work depending on the rest of the design:

enter image description here

Stroke all of them, this is what I think I would do:

enter image description here

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    Circle B, the master of circles
    – SaturnsEye
    Jul 23, 2014 at 14:43
  • There you go! :-)
    – Circle B
    Jul 23, 2014 at 14:44
  • Yeah I think i'm gonna go with option 3 that you mentioned, thanks for the advice! +1 :)
    – BoneStarr
    Jul 23, 2014 at 15:02
  • Great, obviously the strokes I did are pretty rough since they are not vector, and I would definitely do like Bakabaka said and make them the same thickness as the line below the circles.
    – Circle B
    Jul 23, 2014 at 15:07
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    Do add to the stroke idea, I'd also consider a slightly thicker one at 50% gray.
    – DA01
    Jul 23, 2014 at 15:32
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Keep it simple: use a subtle outline on each of the circular swatches. From what I can see, the colour and thickness of the horizontal white line would be great.

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  • +1 Thanks for your comment, good observation of the stroke.
    – BoneStarr
    Jul 23, 2014 at 15:01
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If you have the capability and the time to experiment, I would try glossy dots on a matte background.

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    I second that. I have done it, and it is - when done well - superbly elegant. That would mean gloss on the other coloured dots too.
    – benteh
    Jul 23, 2014 at 21:01

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