Project Status Spotlights

I have something you might be able to leverage.  This is a Formula Rich Text field.  It looks at the date of the record and displays the day of week abbreviation with a different color background for each day of the week.

You could do the same for your different statuses.  The color variable defines the background color based on the day of week.  The dayText variable defines the text to display.  The result variable creates a box with the corresponding color/text.

var text color = Case(
 DayOfWeek([Date]),0,"#845EC2"
,1,"#D65DB1"
,2,"#FF6F91"
,3,"#FF9671"
,4,"#FFC75F"
,5,"#F9F871"
,6,"#008F7A"
 );
 
 var text dayText = Case(
 DayOfWeek([Date]),0,"Sun"
,1,"Mon"
,2,"Tue"
,3,"Wed"
,4,"Thu"
,5,"Fri"
,6,"Sat"
 );
 
 var text result = "<a style=\" text-decoration: none; background:" & $color & "; border-radius: 2px; color: #fff; display: inline-block; width: 30px; text-align: center; padding: 1px 1px; font: bold 700 10px/1 \"Calibri\", sans-serif; text-shadow: none; title=\"S\">" & $dayText &"</a>";

$result

I should have also mentioned that you would create the Formula Rich Text field and then place it next to your status field on the relevant forms.

This should be easy create a formula rich text field and then use case to assign the colors. 
Case([Project Status], 
"Yellow - At Risk", "<span background-color:#ffc107>",

.......
)