The Visual Intelligence Index™Color has always been judged by taste. Now it has a score.
The Visual Intelligence Index™ rates any brand color palette out of 10 on up to six measures (the same ones a seasoned creative director weighs by instinct) and checks the result against the colors of real brands across 20 industries. It tells you not only whether a palette is beautiful, but whether it will work.
What is the Visual Intelligence Index™?
The Visual Intelligence Index™ is Huevex's proprietary scoring system for color palettes. It rates a palette from 0 to 10 on up to six measures (Anchor Strength, Role Separation, Value Range, Chroma Rhythm, Use Range and Brief Fit) and benchmarks every score against color data from up to 75,000 brands in each of 20 industries.
Think of it as a second opinion that has studied an entire market. A designer can feel that a palette is right. The Index shows why, and exactly where it will break.
Why color theory alone can't tell you if a palette works.
Color theory is a map of relationships. Complementary, analogous, triadic: the classic rules of color harmony tell you which hues belong together on the color wheel. They were never built to tell you whether six colors can carry a brand.
A palette can be perfectly harmonious and still fail. No color strong enough to own. Three mid-tones fighting over the same job. Nothing dark enough for type. An accent so loud it drowns the logo. These are the failures that surface months later: in the pitch deck, on the storefront, in an app no one can read in sunlight.
The Visual Intelligence Index™ measures those failures directly. It doesn't ask whether colors relate. It asks whether they perform, and grounds every answer in how real brands in your industry use color.
Both pass the color wheel. Only one passes the Index.
The six measures of a great brand color palette.
Every score breaks down into six measures. Each answers a question you would otherwise have to settle by eye, and by argument.
Anchor Strength
Does one color clearly lead and give the palette a recognizable identity?
The strongest brands are remembered by a single color: the one you'd name if someone asked. Anchor Strength measures whether your palette has that lead color, and whether it is distinctive enough to own. It looks at how clearly one hue sits at the top of the color hierarchy, rather than splitting attention across several equals.
- Scores high:
- one hero color that stands apart from the rest in hue, weight or intensity.
- Pulls it down:
- two or three colors of similar weight, none of them in charge.
Weak anchor
Strong anchor
Role Separation
Does each color have a distinct job without competing with the others?
A working palette is a cast, not a crowd. Role Separation checks that your primary, secondary, neutral and accent colors each have a clear job, and that no two are so alike they blur into one. When roles are clean, anyone on the team knows which color is for buttons, which is for backgrounds, and which accent color is saved for the moments that matter.
- Scores high:
- clearly different primary, secondary, neutral and accent colors.
- Pulls it down:
- near-duplicate colors, or an accent as heavy as the primary.
Value Range
Is there enough light-to-dark range to create contrast and hierarchy?
Value (how light or dark a color is) does more work than hue ever will. Drain the color from a great design and its hierarchy is still there in grayscale. Value Range measures the spread from your lightest color to your darkest, and whether there are enough steps between them for real value contrast: headlines that stand off the page, text that reads, layers that separate.
- Scores high:
- a true near-white and near-black, with usable steps between.
- Pulls it down:
- everything clustered in the mid-tones.
The grayscale test
Strong value range
Mid-tone heavy
Chroma Rhythm
Are vivid and muted colors distributed with purpose?
Chroma is a color's intensity: how vivid or muted it is. Great palettes use it like rhythm in music: mostly measured, with deliberate moments of volume. Chroma Rhythm scores that balance. It is the principle behind the 60-30-10 rule, where a dominant tone, a supporting tone and a small vivid accent create energy without noise.
- Scores high:
- a muted foundation with a vivid accent used sparingly.
- Pulls it down:
- every color at full saturation, or every color so muted nothing leads.
Use Range
Can the colors work across backgrounds, typography, accents and brand applications?
A palette is only as good as the places it can go. Use Range measures how many real jobs your colors can do: carry body text, sit behind a photograph, hold a button, survive on a dark background. It rewards accessible color pairings (combinations with enough contrast for text to read), so a brand looks as strong on a phone screen as it does on a mood board.
- Scores high:
- several text-safe pairings, a dependable background and a reliable dark.
- Pulls it down:
- colors that only work as swatches.
Web
App
Social
Brief Fit
Does the palette reflect the intended audience, style, personality and use?
The right palette for a children's brand is the wrong palette for a law firm. Brief Fit measures how well a palette matches what it is for: its audience, personality, industry and purpose. This is where the Index's industry data matters most: it weighs your palette against how brands in your sector actually use color, so you can fit the category, or break from it on purpose.
- Scores high:
- a palette whose temperature, intensity and contrast match the brief.
- Pulls it down:
- a palette that is well-made but built for someone else.
How the score is calculated
Each measure is scored from 0 to 10. The overall score combines them into a single number, so you can compare palettes at a glance and still see exactly where each one is strong and where it is weak.
Brief Fit is scored when you give the Color Engine a brief: a sector and a style. Without one, the overall score reflects the five craft measures.
| Score | Rating | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 9.0-10 | Exceptional | Ready to carry a brand as it stands |
| 8.0-8.9 | Strong | Works well; one measure worth tuning |
| 7.0-7.9 | Solid | Usable, with clear room to improve |
| 6.0-6.9 | Developing | Needs work on two or more measures |
| Below 6.0 | Rework | Rethink the anchor or the value structure first |
Benchmarked against brand colors from 20 industries
A score means little without a reference point. Behind the Index sits color intelligence drawn from up to 75,000 brands in each of 20 industries: how they anchor their identities, how much contrast they build in, where they spend their vivid colors. That is what turns a palette score from an opinion into evidence.
For designers, it means walking into a pitch knowing how a palette stacks up against the category it will compete in. For brands, it means choosing colors with a whole market's worth of precedent behind the decision.
Industries included: Aerospace, Agencies, Alcohol, Automotive, Beauty & Cosmetics, Cannabis, Consulting, Education, Entertainment, Fashion & Retail, Fintech, Food, Healthcare, Home & Furniture, Hospitality, Legal, Real Estate, SaaS & Tech, Sports & Fitness, Travel.
Inside a score: Desert Ochre, 8.7
Here is how the Index reads a real palette.
| Measure | Score | The reading |
|---|---|---|
| Anchor Strength | 7.2 | The ochre leads by size, but its muted mid-value keeps it from fully owning the palette; the navy family competes for attention |
| Role Separation | 8.5 | Ink, navy and steel blue each hold a job, though navy and steel blue sit close together |
| Value Range | 10.0 | Runs from near-black ink to pale mist, with usable steps between |
| Chroma Rhythm | 10.0 | A quiet, earthy base with one vivid cyan accent: the 60-30-10 principle in practice |
| Use Range | 8.0 | Strong text pairings on mist and on ink; the ochre is less dependable behind small type |
| Overall | 8.7 | Strong |
The fastest route past 9 is the anchor: give the ochre more depth or intensity so it clearly outranks the blues.
Where the Index works inside Huevex
The Index isn't a report you request. It runs through everything you make in Huevex.
All of it inside a library of more than one million color systems, palettes, gradients and swatches.
Questions about the Visual Intelligence Index™
The Visual Intelligence Index™ is Huevex's proprietary scoring system for color palettes. It rates a palette from 0 to 10 on up to six measures (Anchor Strength, Role Separation, Value Range, Chroma Rhythm, Use Range and Brief Fit) and benchmarks each score against brand color data from 20 industries.
A good brand color palette has one color that clearly leads, a distinct job for every other color, a full range from light to dark, vivid color used sparingly, and enough contrast to work on screens, in print and behind text. It also suits the audience and industry it was made for. Those are the six things the Index measures.
Most strong brand palettes use three to six colors: an anchor color, one or two supporting colors, a light and a dark neutral, and an accent. Fewer than three rarely covers every job; more than six usually means two colors are doing the same one, which lowers a palette's Role Separation score.
Start with the brief: who the brand speaks to, what it should feel like and where the colors will appear. Choose one anchor color the brand can own, then build supporting colors, neutrals and an accent around it. In Huevex, enter a base color, sector and style, and the Color Engine returns palettes already scored by the Index.
The 60-30-10 rule splits a design into a dominant color covering about 60%, a supporting color at about 30%, and an accent at about 10%. It keeps vivid color for the moments that matter. The Index's Chroma Rhythm measure scores the same principle: a calm foundation with purposeful bursts of intensity.
Value contrast is the difference between how light and how dark colors are, regardless of hue. It creates hierarchy: headlines that stand out, text that reads, layers that separate. A palette with strong value contrast still works in grayscale. The Index scores it under Value Range.
Partly. Use Range rewards palettes with pairings that have enough contrast for text to read on real backgrounds. It is not a formal accessibility audit, so check your final text and background pairings against WCAG contrast ratios before launch.
Browsing the library is free and needs no credits. Sign in and you get two free generation credits a day in the Color Engine, and every palette it generates comes with its score. Foundry, Huevex's paid plan, is $4 a month, and you can try it for 48 hours for $1.
Find out what your palette scores.
Bring a palette you're working on, or start from a single base color. Sign in for two free generation credits a day, or try Foundry for 48 hours for $1.