Color is one of the most powerful elements of graphic design, especially when it comes to branding. It can evoke emotions, convey messages, and create associations with your audience. But how do you select a brand color scheme that suits your identity, goals, and target market? In this article, we will guide you through some basic steps and principles to help you choose the right colors for your brand.
Before you pick any colors, you need to have a clear idea of what your brand stands for, what values it represents, and how you want to communicate with your customers. Your brand personality is the human-like traits that define your brand's voice, tone, and style. For example, is your brand playful, serious, elegant, or adventurous? Depending on your brand personality, you can select colors that match or contrast with it, creating different effects and moods.
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Find the colors that match your brand, do not just pick them. Brand colors are a communication channel between your business and your audience. The way the colors are perceived is more important than the way they look. 1- Create a document that thoroughly describes your brands’ values and personality. 2- Research and analyze your potential audience, their wants, needs and cultural background. 3- Clarify your business goals. Focus on the most important ones only. Don’t be greedy. At this stage you are defining your brand. Articulation comes later. 4- Hire a visual brand professional, provide them with the information described in the previous points and trust the process.
Color theory is the science and art of using colors in a harmonious and meaningful way. It helps you understand how colors interact, influence, and complement each other. One of the most useful tools of color theory is the color wheel, which shows the relationships between primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. The color wheel can help you create different types of color schemes, such as monochromatic, analogous, complementary, triadic, or tetradic. Each color scheme has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending on the context and purpose of your design.
Uncover color's science and art. Harness the color wheel's power to blend primary, secondary, and tertiary hues. Mold diverse schemes - monochromatic, analogous, complementary, triadic, tetradic - for context-driven impact. Beyond aesthetics, colors stir emotions. Adapt, experiment, and master the palette's language.
Colors can also have psychological and cultural implications, affecting how people perceive and respond to your brand. Different colors can evoke different emotions, associations, and meanings, depending on the individual, the situation, and the culture. For example, red can signify passion, excitement, or danger, while blue can suggest trust, calmness, or professionalism. However, these are not universal rules, and you should always do some research on your target audience and market to avoid any potential misunderstandings or conflicts.
I consider colour psychology but what I’m most interested in when working with colour palettes is symbolism. What does the colour represent historically, is there any cultural relevance, where does it show up in nature? In the example above, Red is described as signifying passion, excitement and danger. Looking into the symbolism of the colour red shows that spiritually it represents materialistic ambition, whereas in China it is symbolic of luck, joy and happiness.
There is a whole new learning that showcased colour as a cultural entity. Your blue sky may be someone else’s orange sky. Fascinating stuff the human brain and the environment.
Once you have a few options for your color scheme, you need to test them in different scenarios and mediums to see how they work in practice. You can use online tools, such as Adobe Color or Coolors, to generate and preview your color schemes, as well as to adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness of each color. You can also create mockups and prototypes of your logo, website, packaging, or other branding materials to see how your colors look in different sizes, formats, and backgrounds. Finally, you can ask for feedback from your colleagues, friends, or potential customers to get some objective opinions and suggestions.
Color Harmony Validation: Testing for Impact Test color schemes practically: Virtual Experimentation: Tools like Adobe Color, Coolors for adjustments. Real-world Simulations: Mockups for diverse formats. Fresh Feedback: Seek opinions for refinement. Colors flourish when tested and tailored.
The last step is to apply your color scheme consistently across all your branding elements and platforms. This will help you create a coherent and recognizable brand identity that stands out from the competition and builds trust and loyalty with your customers. However, you should also be flexible and open to change your color scheme if needed, especially if your brand evolves, expands, or faces new challenges. You can always tweak, add, or remove colors to adapt to new trends, markets, or goals, as long as you keep your brand personality and message intact.
After defining your brand color's palette, keep it consistent across all brand touchpoints. This will be repetition in your audience mind. BTW It doesn't mean that you should only stick to that. You can tweak it as long as you keep your brand's message intact
One additonal factor is how colors interact with one another. For example, yellow in print and on screen can vary, as well as when used with light or dark colors. Yellow will look brighter on white and can almost become more of a gold when put against black. We must also factor in some of those variables when choosing our brand colors.
You can add colors to a brand that have some kind of history or relation with a culture. i.e using dark green on Pakistani Independence Day