WCU Colors

A university's colors are deeply important to its students, alumni and stakeholders. When Catamounts want to show their school pride, they wear purple proudly, adorned where appropriate by beautiful gold. Occasionally, we need a little bit of color diversity in our printed collateral, but we should always keep our primary colors, well, primary.

Primary Color Palette

Western Carolina's primary colors consist of a specific purple and a specific gold. If you are working on a printed piece that will be printed on a press (versus a digital printer), you also have the option of using a metallic version of our gold. Purple should play a dominant role in most marketing pieces, with gold serving as the accessory of choice. Find the appropriate color mixes for CMYK and RGB below as well as our HEX codes for digital use and our pantone colors for branded merchandise and one-color printing.

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Accent Palette

The default secondary colors, when needed, include white and a range of grays. Note that we rarely use a pure black in design because dark grays are more complementary with our favorite color, WCU Purple. 

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Supporting Colors

On occasion, to set apart various themes in a larger published piece or when design necessitates color variety, we use colors that support our primary WCU Purple and Catamount Gold. Our supporting colors are outlined below. Supporting colors should be limited to interior pages in a publication. Always open with WCU Purple. When using supporting colors in a publication, always use two or more. Varying supporting colors ensures that Catamount Gold and WCU Purple remain prominent.

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