Well, what we want here is three orthogonal axes: one for “reverse”, one for “bold”, and one for “italic”. If “bold” is lightness and “italic” is saturation, then it makes sense for “reverse” to be hue. So my first thought was to have “reverse” switch to warm colors instead of cool ones.
If the yellow is too hard to read, we can use brown instead, but I find the brown and orange hard to distinguish, personally.
Or, because the orange looks more “saturated” to me than the red, we could do it this way (or with brown in place of orange, as above):
Another person on the team suggested that the third axis actually be a reversal: turn black into white.
What do you all think about this? Which of these palettes is your favorite? (Or, feel free to suggest something else; these are the colors available.)
- 1: Reverse is orange, reverse italic is red
- 2: Reverse is brown, reverse italic is red
- 3: Reverse is red, reverse italic is orange
- 3.5: Reverse is red, reverse italic is brown
- 4: Reverse is white, reverse italic is red
- 5: Something else!