Questions about including blues other than the signature blues in the JHU brand palette have come up. The addition of 285 and 279 adds some welcome variation to a monochromatic blue palette.

Accessibility-related issues can arise when 284 “Hopkins” blue is chosen as the signature color. 284 does not pass accessibility requirements when used as the text color on a white background (or as a background to white text) at any font size. However, 284 can be substituted for 279 or 285 at varying font sizes to give the illusion of a single color while still maintaining appropriate color contrast to meet our accessibility requirements. In this example, the horizontal bar uses 284, the lead story headline uses 279, and the kicker uses 285.