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Light page showing six prohibited color treatments as a 3x2 card grid, each crossed out with a red diagonal and captioned with the rule it breaks.
Summary
A "what not to do" color page: six rounded cards, each demonstrating a banned treatment, struck through with a red diagonal line and captioned underneath with the rule.
Visual description
White background with the standard three-zone running header ("Docusign Brand Identity Guidelines v1.2" left; "Color" and "Color Misuse" centered; "35" right). A left column carries the heading "Color Misuse" and a short intro paragraph. The right two-thirds is a 3x2 grid of rounded cards, each one a wrong example with a single red diagonal strike across it and a sentence caption below: illegible color combinations (poppy "AaBbCc" on cobalt), adjusting color transparency (overlapping translucent circles), modifying brand colors in tint or hue (three off-palette circles), the logo on an off-palette green, illegible logo over photography (a woman against sky with a ghosted mark), and modified logo colors (dark logo on deep violet). The red diagonal is the consistent signal for "do not".
Key takeaway
The red-diagonal-strike convention applied uniformly across a six-up grid: one glance reads the whole page as prohibitions, and each card pairs the visual error with a one-line caption naming the rule. Showing the mistake is faster to internalize than describing it.
Reuse notes
A reusable layout for any "misuse" or "don't" page in a brand or design-system guide (color, logo, type all fit the same grid). Pairs naturally with a facing "do" page. Keep the strike color off-palette (here red against a violet system) so it never reads as approved.
From this deck: Color misuse do-not grid
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