Color Palette

Core palette (required)

The official colors of Oregon State University are black and orange. Use of the university colors is critical when reproducing the OSU logo, which must appear on every OSU Web page. This is accomplished by placement of the required OSU logo banner.

Use of the required banner insures correct reproduction of the OSU colors.

Web colors are defined as a hexadecimal value. The university colors are defined below:

OSU Web hexidecimal colors:
#000000 Black	#e55302 OSU Orange

Extended palette (recommended)

The OSU Web design team has identified six color pairs that complement the black and orange core palette.

Orange has a strong personality and can be difficult to use with other colors, particularly bold ones. The extended palette shown below has been tested in various combinations and has proven to work well with OSU orange. These color pairs are used within the OSU Web Templates for the site title and photo and text block, and can be used for graphical text or other applications as well.

Extended palette complement pairs:
#ee9944 Citrus Orange	#110000 Complement
#aaaa77 Spring Green	#777744 Complement
#4c5c5c Cool Gray	#334444 Complement
#6688aa Misty Blue	#336699 Complement
#667799 Steel Blue	#334477 Complement
#887788 Light Plum	#554466 Complement
#665555 Warm Gray	#443333 Complement

Header and subhead colors (recommended)

Use color for heads and subheads for emphasis and to provide a visual break within a page.

If you use the OSU Web templates, color definitions for certain kinds of text are automatically specified within the template style sheets. For example, a standard subhead style (designated as h3) displays the text in OSU orange. The page you are now reading provides a good example of an orange h3 subhead.

Link colors (recommended)

Standard text links should always appear in a color that contrasts with the rest of the text. Visited links should change color to cue users that they have selected that link previously.

When text is black or dark on a light or white background, the following colors are recommended:

Links: #0033cc

Visited links: #6699ff

When text is light or white on a black or dark background, the following colors are recommended:

Links: #fefefe

Visited links: #999999