Colour, print, and photocopy: making grant figures survive a board pack
Many trustee packs are still printed in greyscale. If the story vanishes when the blue becomes grey, the figure was never ready.
Research teams often approve figures on a bright monitor, then send a PDF into a board pack that is photocopied on the morning of the meeting. Categories that lived in colour collapse into similar greys. The treasurer reads the wrong series.
We draw with patterns as well as colour: hatching, dotted outlines, and direct labels on the bars. Direct labels beat a legend that sits an inch away from the chart, especially when the pack is bound and the legend falls on the previous page.
Check contrast as if a reader has colour-vision deficiency, because some will. House palettes from universities are not automatically safe. If the communications office insists on brand teal and brand gold, we test both on paper and record the result in the handover note.
Line weights must survive reduction to A4. A hairline grid that looks precise at poster size becomes noise at report size. We design at the final print width, not at ‘something large we can shrink’.
If the pack will be projected in a poorly lit committee room, avoid thin grey type. Captions belong at the same dark ink as the body text of the report, not as a decorative whisper under the frame.