The golden arches. The red-and-white bullseye. These ultra-iconic logos wouldn’t be quite the same without a splash of color. And neither would yours. But the endless spectrum of options can be pretty overwhelming when it comes time to build your brand color palette. And when you’re competing in a kaleidoscope of Technicolor marketing, it’s not easy to stand out. An Ipsos and Jones Knowles Ritchie survey of more than 26,000 consumers found that a measly 4% of the brand colors they looked at were “truly distinctive.” Ready to learn how to choose brand colors that make an impact — and not in a bad, squint-to-focus sort of way? In this step-by-step guide, we’ll help you choose the perfect color combos with confidence.
What Are Brand Colors?
Brand colors are a limited selection of colors that visually represent an organization. Graphic designers use brand colors as their go-to hues when creating promotional marketing materials for a company. These colors show up across all digital and physical touchpoints — from the company’s logo design, website and social grid to its product packaging, event swag and brick-and-mortar environment. Whether you’re launching a startup from scratch or reimagining an established identity, the color palette you choose today will underpin your entire visual brand for years to come. You need trusty colors that support brand recognition and help you execute a wide range of marketing and design needs.
The most successful brand colors are:
Clear: Words and images displayed in your brand colors must be legible wherever they are — from a crisp business card to a blaze orange construction vest.
Meaningful: Your chosen color scheme needs to get your brand message across at a glance.
Versatile: When you’re whipping up a website or picking packaging, brand colors need to help rather than hinder you.
Memorable: Your audience should be able to associate branded visual assets with your organization even if they don’t see your company name.
Reproducible: There’s no point in curating a perfect color palette if the marketers and designers on your team don’t have the info they need to use those specific colors in their projects.
If your chosen colors meet the above criteria, you’re in good shape. However, selecting a successful scheme isn’t as simple as spinning the color wheel a few times and seeing where you land. It helps to know a thing or two about color theory and your brand identity before you start swatching.
Picking Powerful Brand Colors, Step by Step
Considering, choosing, testing, finalizing, and leveraging your brand colors can be an exciting journey if you give yourself a little structure. Allow our 6-step guide to be your yellow brick road to brand color bliss!
1. Articulate Your Brand Identity
You’ve probably heard about color psychology before. This field of study examines the relationship between color and human behavior. Blue is relaxing. Yellow is cheerful. Red is intense. But these associations aren’t all that useful if you don’t know what mood or feeling you’re aiming for. That’s why it’s essential to first determine what you want to convey about your brand before thinking about how to convey it through color. Maybe you already have a list of adjectives you want customers to associate with your business. Or maybe it’s time to draft a brand positioning statement. Either way, make sure you can define your brand identity in a few words. Choose words that express the mood, feeling, experience or impression you want your brand to make on your audience.
2. Learn the Basics of Communicating With Color
Once you know what you’re trying to say through color, you’re ready to explore color as a language. Speaking this language begins with having a baseline understanding of the different properties of color — including hue, saturation and value — and what they say based on how they’re used. Hue refers to which color family a particular shade falls into on the color wheel. These include red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. We’ve already touched on the fact that color psychology connects certain hues with certain feelings and behaviors. But if you compare two greens like lime and olive, you’ll see that different colors within the same family can have very different qualities. This is where saturation and value become valuable tools to help understand the nuances of those differences. Saturation describes how vibrant or muted a color is. Vibrant, highly saturated colors like magenta come across as more youthful and energizing. Low-saturation colors like dusty rose or mauve usually feel calmer and more mature. Value is a measure of how light or dark a color is. A darker color closer to black will usually have a stronger presence than a pale, airy color that’s closer to white. Pastels like baby blue are associated with sweetness and innocence, whereas deep hues like navy often look rich and sophisticated. When you tinker with all three — hue, saturation and value — you can end up with some pretty interesting colors that will have a lot to say in your branded content. You don’t need to land on the perfect logo color at this point, but consider how your brand identity aligns with the qualities associated with each end of these color spectra.
3. Explore Color Variations and Combinations
At this point, you don’t have any specific colors picked out just yet, but you should have a narrower sense of where you’re aiming. For instance, you might be responding to bright, highly saturated pinks and oranges that strike a playful tone. Or perhaps you’re leaning toward deep, muted wine reds that feel classy and grown-up. Take these rough ideas and run with them. Gather brand color palette inspiration to find specific shades and supporting colors that fit your brand identity. This part can be a lot of fun if you approach it with an open mind and a sharp eye. There are lots of ways to do brand color research: Collect inspiring images, such as photos, graphics and branding examples on Pinterest. Can you spot any similar hues, values or saturation levels in the images you’re pinning? Look for striking color combos within social media posts, coffee table books and design magazines. What shades harmonize with each other? Are there any unexpected color combos that feel right for your brand? Use a color palette generator like Adobe Color to pull color combinations from images. Analyze brand colors used by your competitors and other organizations you admire. What color combinations are they using? What do these colors say about the brands? However you gather your inspo, take time to assess how the colors coming through in your research stack up in terms of hue, saturation and value. Also, look at how different hues in the color combinations you’re looking at relate to each other: Analogous colors sit next to each other on the color wheel (like yellow and green). Complementary colors sit across from each other on the color wheel (like blue and orange). Triadic colors sit in a triangle across the color wheel (like purple, yellow and blue-green). These types of color combinations tend to look balanced and feel harmonious. But they’re not the only pairings you can play with. Consider if the shades you prefer fall into any other general color categories, such as: Warm colors. Cool colors. Earth tones. Jewel tones. Seasonal colors. Rainbow brights. Neutrals. These exercises will leave you with lots of inspiration and a better idea of what specific colors and color pairings could work for your brand. You should also have a sense of what colors don’t align with the message and identity you want for your organization.
4. Pick Your Brand’s Primary and Accent Colors
How many brand colors do you actually need? There’s no perfect number, but any more than 10 colors can feel excessive. Ideally, you should choose just enough colors to get the job done, with enough light, medium and dark options in the mix to support a wide range of design needs. The important thing is to make sure you have enough colors across 3 different categories: 1 or 2 primary brand colors for your brand. 1 to 4 secondary brand colors…
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