New Base Colors - No!

[Matt_Kennedy1]

I've never been fussy about colors, but the new options for base themes are a big step backwards for me.  The old bright, bold, cheery, energetic & fun colors that made the Airtable experience feel enjoyable and different from your average boring, serious database, have been replaced by: A) a dark, dreary version (my green base now looks exactly like Excel - uugh) or a mushy pastel version (were people asking for more 'washed out' low contrast header options?).

The fun bright colors were part of Airtable's experience (and brand) for me.  Is there a way to bring them back for my workspace?

[Anna]

I admit, I am fussy about colors, and I thought I was going crazy this morning when all my external views and interfaces started showing up in a different color than the color selected for the base. What is going on???

[krs021]

Signed up to post to the community just for this. It's not even a matter of preference for me - I'm colorblind and the new colors are more dull and now much harder to distinguish. I've been spending all day editing the colors on many of my key single select fields that are now too difficult for me to differentiate.

PLEASE GO BACK TO THE MORE VIBRANT COLOR PALETTE

[KerryH]

I was the same! Thought I had adjusted something and couldn't figure out WHY on earth  the colors changed! Uggh... Bring back the vibrancy of the old color system!!!

[Anna · Accepted solution]

The explanation is here: https://community.airtable.com/t5/announcements/new-visual-refresh/ba-p/145173 Apparently it was done for accessibility...

[krs021]

Yes - I saw that but it's a big swing and a miss. Adjusting the color of the font addresses the accessibility and, I agree, that having white font on dark colors and black font on light colors does make them easier to read. 

However, adjusting the color palette of the background itself (In this case making the colors more muted) only serves to make the colors blend into each other much more easily. So now I'm in a situation where it's easier to read the font on the lighter colored options, but can no longer distinguish the options themselves. 

[Scott_Gould]

Agreed. It's not only colors. It's also the icons - they have been made thiner, and therefore less readable, surely??!?

[Brenton_Partrid]

Our team is absolutely mortified by this change. Our "Orange Airtable," as we would lovingly call it colloquially, was one of the core pinnacles of our operations, and a joy to use... and now our only choices are Depressed Carrot or Puke Yellow, with it defaulting to Puke Yellow?! We're lucky we weren't sharing any now-Puke-Yellow embeds or Interfaces with clients, which would have negatively impacted our brand identity in a massive way. Depressed Carrot is the best we can do now, but make no mistake, it won't be nearly as joyful and sunny for our team to wake up to.

We had trusted Airtable for an ability to create experiences that are consistent with our brands, both for internal and external-facing tools - even if the color palette had been limited, we could rely on its predictable ability to bring joy to our users. There's been a lot of trust lost with this change, and I hope that we're at least given the escape hatch of legacy colors to be able to repair the damage.

[Matt_Kennedy1]

Thanks Anna - I think we should continue having this conversation on the Product Announcement Feedback thread, as I would think it will be easier for Airtable to consolidate the feedback there.  I'd encourage everyone to post their comments there too.

[cwilson]

I agree the color change definitely makes the product more difficult to use. It feels like i need to turn the brightness up on my screen.