Recommendations For Colour Schemes

[brainier]

I am not colour blind or dsylexic, so I cannot look at the Zionworx's output on our church projector and see any problems with our blue background and yellow text. I did get someone who is dsylexic to look at a few options when I first installed the projector and we have stuck with their preferred colours.

Last Sunday at church someone provided a song via PowerPoint and it was shown without change - it was black text on a white background. It was harder to read than the yellow on blue - and that was just for me.

I guess the defaults that come with the product at not idea (they have shadows for a start). Does anyone want to contribute, so that those of us who run Zionworx but are not affected by the above can ensure that we are not causing problems to those in our churches who are. In the UK we have a recent law requiring disabled access to not be difficult. It would be good to ensure that we are not projecting unreadable words either.

So, what is best?

[Jonathan Hills]

Following a few powerpoint presentations, we use a black background with white text and verdana typeface. This seems very easy to read and I'm told prolongs the lamp life.

[AliBy]

A few of things I have learnt:

• It is known that Yellow-on-Blue is the best contract combination for reading in general.
• ALL CAPS is not easy to read fast. It used to be used as a standard when resolution was the problem and small characters got lost in the pixels. We naturally read Title or Sentence case in everything we look at so that is the best and easiest to view.
• Left or Right alignment (depending on which way you normally read) is also easier to read as your eyes are trained to go to the start of the next line. As subtle as it may be Centred text causes visual fatigue as you need to first find where the next line starting point is before you read it - people loose concentration /focus.
• Outlining with a contrasting colour to the Font provides clarity for practically every background. E.g we use a black outline with a yellow font as the default: so with a sunset photo background where the light is yellow the black outline clarifies the text, where the clouds are dark, the yellow shows up well. A "shadowed" text effect on the other hand results in the "no shadow" side of the characters being eaten up by the photos. IF you don't do this the when background images are used the font colour must be very carefully chosen so that it is not masked in the pictures colours.
• Transitions and fades should be fast to that they are not distracting due to the delay, but included as the softer change is less dramatic to the ambience/mood.

Just some suggestions for default settings - when you have someone carefully adding other colours, backgrounds and styles is can add to or rather facilitate what God is doing in our hearts.

[davepartridge]

I completely agree with AliBy's suggestions. As a Church we use yellow-on-blue (with left aligN) because that is the easiest combination to read for everyone - we tend not to use photographic backgrounds for songs because it makes it harder to read.

Our transitions are set to switch immediately because computer processing deficiencies show up less and it doesn't matter so much if the operator is running slightly late!

[Wayne]

We have someone in our fellowship who is dyslexic. We use Yellow Text (with the shadow option) on a dark reddish/brown background in lower case and left aligned. He finds this combination perfect and says he enjoys the choruses more - praise God!

[AliBy]

Has he any comments on yellow on (dark) blue?

[brainier]

Or indeed which font (and size, though that is resolution and screen size dependant) that works well.

[Wayne]

We have used Yellow on Dark Blue with a Font Size of Arial 28 with the shadow option selected - this alos seems to work well. There are many types of dyslexia and it is all about experimenting to find what works best for you/them - Font Colour, Style, Size as well as background (generally a plain background is best)

[mark thompson]

I use the following settings:

• White text,
• black background
• font = verdana
• size 38
• regular
• outline text
• align=left
• margins, top/bottom=10 & sides=6

Black background is useful if doing a video overlay and then using a chroma key to remove the black background.
The outline for the text also makes text viewable on background images especially where there is a bright spot, e.g. the sun.
Hope this helps.

Mark Thompson