Colour

Status first, brand second.

On a RISA map, colour carries operational meaning: a red road is closed, an amber water point is partly working. So the status set is fixed and shared by every theme, and each theme’s brand colours stay out of its way, living in the frame around the map rather than on it.

The reserved status set

The same in every theme. Each colour is shown as printed, in greyscale and under three simulated colour-vision deficiencies (Machado et al., 2009). Status is always shown twice, by colour and by line style or symbol shape, so it holds up even where two colours get close.

GreyscaleClosed, open and partly sit at clearly different grey values (L* in the greyscale column), so a photocopy keeps the order dark–mid–light.

Red-green deficienciesOpen and closed move towards each other for protan and deutan readers. Solid and dotted lines, and filled and crossed-out symbols, keep them apart.

HazardsFlood blue and debris brown are only used as hatched fills, never as lines or symbols, so they can’t be mistaken for status.

Partner colours, as observed

Sampled in October 2026. HI/Atlas Logistique from hi.org (Atlas Logistique appears under HI’s branding there), MapAction from its site stylesheet and logo, and Kobo from its site’s colors.scss. These are not official brand specifications, so each partner should confirm them.

Where we overlap, and what we hold back

The shared cool families become the backbone of the themes. The warm partner colours are kept for each partner’s own materials, because on a RISA map they would read as status.

Theme palettes

Values are read live from each theme’s tokens.css. Contrast is against the theme’s page background, where 4.5:1 is needed for body text (AA) and 3:1 for large text and UI elements. Only built themes are shown.