ColorBrewers

ColorBrewers is a community-driven open-source project that curates color palettes intended for branding, packaging, and visualization in the beverage industry, with a particular focus on craft beer. The project aims to provide designers and printers with accessible, cohesive color systems that maintain legibility across print and digital media.

Content and organization: The repository hosts a growing library of palettes, each with hex codes, RGB and CMYK equivalents, and recommended usage notes. Palettes are tagged by hue families, brightness, and accessibility scores, including contrast ratios and simulated color blindness. The project also offers design tokens and a lightweight API to retrieve palette data for design systems and automation workflows.

Governance and licensing: ColorBrewers operates under an open-source license, with contributions governed by a community-maintained code of conduct. Submissions are reviewed for accessibility and print compatibility, with status tracked through issues and pull requests.

Applications: Users apply ColorBrewers palettes to beer labels, packaging, and logo materials, as well as to data visualizations and marketing materials where color communication is important. The resource is used by independent breweries, branding studios, educators, and researchers.

Reception and impact: The project is noted for promoting accessibility-focused color decisions in an industry prone to visually busy designs. It has inspired related initiatives in branding and data visualization, and it continues to expand through community involvement.

See also: ColorBrewer, Color theory, Accessibility in design, Branding guidelines.