Although nsw.gov.au as a whole falls into the Masterbrand brand category, and defaults to the corporate colour palette, it can support non-corporate and Aboriginal colour palettes in certain specific circumstances.
This article provides instructions on how to identify and request an approved non-corporate colour palette for campaigns.
See Requesting an Aboriginal colour palette for more information on applying Aboriginal branding.
See the nsw.gov.au Brand Framework for more information about how nsw.gov.au supports the NSW Brand Guidelines.
When can you use a non-corporate colour palette on nsw.gov.au?
You may request a non-corporate colour palette on your page(s) if:
- Your webpages are part of a campaign with a specific colour palette, or
- You have matching collateral such as posters, brochures, advertising, EDMs etc
It is your responsibility to seek written approval from your agency/cluster Brand Team to use a non-corporate palette. See Brand contacts for how to contact your Brand Team.
Non-corporate colour palettes are not available for general topic pages.
Co-brand agencies may apply a non-corporate palette to their corporate pages - this will be managed by the OneCX project team during the agency's migration project.
Campaign microsite
To use a non-corporate palette, your content must exist as either one page, or a discrete collection of pages with a parent landing page.
These pages will be treated as a campaign microsite within the CMS.
The non-corporate palette will be applied at the parent level and inherited by any child pages.
Colours cannot be applied on a page-by-page basis.
Requesting a campaign with non-corporate colours - process
Pre-requisites:
- Select your colours - see Selecting your non-corporate colours below
- Build your page(s) in the CMS. At least the landing (home) page of your content must exist before a non-corporate colour palette can be applied. Page(s) can be in draft and incomplete, but you will need to provide the URL of at least the landing page.
Once you've completed steps 1 and 2:
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Raise a campaign request for the Content Team to request implementation. Make sure you include your:
- Colour sets: 1 or 2
- Four colours, for Brand Dark, Brand Light, Brand Accent and Brand Supplementary
- The URL of your page(s)
Selecting your non-corporate colours
Non-corporate colours must still come from the brand-approved extended colour palette, shown below. Colours outside this palette are not permitted. You also cannot use colours from the Aboriginal colour palette - the two different palettes cannot be mixed.
As your webpages are part of a campaign, you should already have the colours required for Brand Dark, Brand Light and Brand Accent. However the website also requires a fourth colour, Brand Supplementary, which you will need to choose.
Additionally, the system will automatically assign a Brand Accent Light, which is a tint of your chosen Brand Accent colour.
You may also need to adjust the chosen colours in order to meet contrast guidelines for accessibility. See Colour contrast and the non-corporate palette for more information.
Colour rules for the website
- You may use one or two colour sets (vertical columns from the colour swatch), eg Green, Orange and Teal
- You need to choose four colours from within the set(s) for the colour values:
- Brand Dark: Must be from row 01
- Brand Light: must be a light colour from rows 03-04
- Brand Accent: can be any colour from your selected set(s), except your Brand Dark and Brand Light. We recommend colours from rows 02-03
- Brand Supplementary: must be a dark colour from row 02
- Your Brand Accent and Brand Supplementary may be the same colour.
- Brand Dark and Brand Light must each be unique - you cannot use these colours for Accent or Supplementary
- The CMS will automatically assign a fifth colour, Brand Accent Light, which will be the corresponding row 04 colour of your chosen Brand Accent. If you choose a row 04 colour for your Brand Accent, then Brand Accent Light will be the same colour.
Colour contrast and the non-corporate palette
Colours are classified as either Dark or Light, with the text colour adjusted accordingly to meet web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) colour contrast requirements.
These are shown in the rows of the swatch above, on either side of the blue line: dark colours have white text, light colours have black text.
Important: Some colours in row 02 are considered light due to the contrast requirement: Green 02, Orange 02, Yellow 02 and Brown 02. If you are using any of these colour sets you will need to add a second colour set to get an acceptable Brand Supplementary colour.
Example - using just the Green colour set:
- Brand Dark: Green 01
- Brand Light: could be any of Green 02, 03 or 04
- Brand Accent: could be any of Green 02, 03 or 04. Note it can't be Green 01 as Brand Dark cannot be the same as one of the other colours. It also cannot be the same as your Brand Light
- Brand Supplementary: there is no acceptable colour within the Green set. Supplementary must be a dark colour. Only Green 01 in this set is dark, but it's already assigned to Brand Dark, so cannot be duplicated. The solution is to either use Grey 02, as the grey colour set is always available, or add a second colour set, eg Teal which has a dark colour in row 02.
How a non-corporate colour palette is applied to components
Once a non-corporate colour palette is applied, many components will automatically apply the new colours. Some components are also configurable, so that you can choose a particular colour. Some components however are fixed and are not affected by the colour change.
Fixed component are not affected by non-corporate palette:
- Header and footer
- Global and in-page alerts
- Danger buttons
- System status elements such as info, success, warning and error messages
Configurable components allow editors to choose from within the colour palette, typically for background colours:
- Hero banners: choose from white (default), Brand Dark, Brand Light or Brand Supplementary
- Cards: choose from white (default), Brand Dark, Brand Light or Brand Supplementary
- Section backgrounds: choose from white (default), grey, Brand Dark, Brand Light, Brand Supplementary or Brand Accent Light
Non-configurable components automatically use colours from the non-corporate palette, usually for highlights and accents, and cannot be changed by an editor:
- Link colours
- In page navigation
- Side navigation
- Tabs
- Callout
- Buttons
- Pagination
- Side scrolling cards
- Card highlights
- Pictograms
Live examples
See different colour palettes in action on the following pages:
- Mental health at work
- Make no doubt
- Coercive control
- Respect at work
- Uptown Program
- Purple Flag
- Perimenopause and Menopause Toolkit
Need any more help?
If you have any questions, or require assistance with anything mentioned in this article, submit a request via the webform.