Block diagram colors

[YossiD]

This is a bit off topic for the forum since it's more of a design issue. Hope that's ok.

I'm looking for recommendations for fill and text colors to be used in block diagram shapes that look good in color as well as when printed on a black and white printer. Generally light color fills with black text work well, but I often need quite a few different fill colors and many light colors look almost identical when printed B&W. Using darker fills makes the text hard to read unless I change the text color to white or yellow, but that often is very readable on a color screen.

To make matters more difficult, I try to use similar colors (e.g. various shades of blue) for blocks that have similar functions. Such shades are nearly impossible to distinguish from one another when the diagram is printed on a B&W printer.

I would think that some graphics professional would have worked out guidelines, but I haven't been able to find anything online.

Any recommendations or pointers will be most welcome.

[aledlund]

When I've been faced with the dilema of color presentations and a black/whiter printer, I've always fallen back on patterns.
al