Palettes

Four grounds a station can stand on.

Each one below is rendered with that palette’s real colors, through the same mapping a built station gets — the ground, the card, the accent, the on-air lamp and the three sizes of text that sit on them.

tidewater

Deep teal ground, amber and cyan.

KDEM90.1 ON AIR

Weekday mornings on KDEM: the headlines, the roads, and the records that got the valley out of the door for thirty years.

Weekdays 6–10am

The Morning Run

The news you can use and the songs you already know.

with Alex Reed

Listen live Requests 555-0101

body: The signal is as clean at the back of the fairgrounds.
muted: Presented by a synthetic voice.
dim: Last updated 24 August 2026

#04171aground
#0d2f35surface-raised
#2ec4b6accent
#5ad1e6accent-alt
#f6b93bsecondary
#c62828live
#c0392bprimary
#eaf6f4neutral-100

Lowest text pair 4.64:1 · floor 4.5 · 13 pairs pass

primary as text on page3.38fill only
live as text on page3.27fill only
highlight as text on white1.76fill only

ember

Warm dark. Burnt orange on brown-black.

KDEM90.1 ON AIR

Weekday mornings on KDEM: the headlines, the roads, and the records that got the valley out of the door for thirty years.

Weekdays 6–10am

The Morning Run

The news you can use and the songs you already know.

with Alex Reed

Listen live Requests 555-0101

body: The signal is as clean at the back of the fairgrounds.
muted: Presented by a synthetic voice.
dim: Last updated 24 August 2026

#17100bground
#2a1a10surface-raised
#e8833aaccent
#f0b45aaccent-alt
#f5c26bsecondary
#c62828live
#a83a1eprimary
#f7eee6neutral-100

Lowest text pair 5.03:1 · floor 4.5 · 13 pairs pass

primary as text on page2.95fill only
live as text on page3.35fill only
highlight as text on white1.64fill only

slate

Cool and quiet. Steel blue on near-black.

KDEM90.1 ON AIR

Weekday mornings on KDEM: the headlines, the roads, and the records that got the valley out of the door for thirty years.

Weekdays 6–10am

The Morning Run

The news you can use and the songs you already know.

with Alex Reed

Listen live Requests 555-0101

body: The signal is as clean at the back of the fairgrounds.
muted: Presented by a synthetic voice.
dim: Last updated 24 August 2026

#0f1418ground
#1e2830surface-raised
#5aa9d6accent
#7fc4e8accent-alt
#9fd0e8secondary
#c62828live
#3a6b8aprimary
#eef3f7neutral-100

Lowest text pair 5.57:1 · floor 4.5 · 13 pairs pass

primary as text on page3.22fill only
live as text on page3.30fill only
highlight as text on white1.66fill only

orchard

Green and low-lit, without being a park brochure.

KDEM90.1 ON AIR

Weekday mornings on KDEM: the headlines, the roads, and the records that got the valley out of the door for thirty years.

Weekdays 6–10am

The Morning Run

The news you can use and the songs you already know.

with Alex Reed

Listen live Requests 555-0101

body: The signal is as clean at the back of the fairgrounds.
muted: Presented by a synthetic voice.
dim: Last updated 24 August 2026

#0b1710ground
#16291csurface-raised
#4caf72accent
#7fd69aaccent-alt
#a9e0bbsecondary
#c62828live
#2e7d4fprimary
#eef7f0neutral-100

Lowest text pair 4.86:1 · floor 4.5 · 13 pairs pass

primary as text on page3.64fill only
live as text on page3.26fill only
highlight as text on white1.49fill only

Why we measure them.

A palette here is one a station adopts without auditing it, so every pair of colors is checked against the WCAG AA standard for readable text, and the check runs on every build. Three of these four shipped a genuine contrast failure before it caught them, and not one of the three was visible by eye. The colors marked fill only are ones we will never set text in — they are for a button behind white type, not for a sentence.

If your station has its own brand, none of this is a constraint on you: send your colors and we build to those, then run the same audit against them and tell you if anything in your own palette will be hard to read.

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