Brand Colors play a pivotal role in shaping the perception and emotional connection with your audience. Colors possess the remarkable ability to evoke emotions and trigger specific associations.
For instance, the color red is frequently linked with notions of urgency or danger, whereas green is synonymous with eco-friendliness. Understanding the psychology behind colors is essential because the hues you select for your brand can profoundly influence how your target audience interprets your brand’s identity and character.
Based on the research, people make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone.
Considering the fact above, choosing the right brand color is crucial for a successful business. If you are starting your own business or blog, it is important to choose your brand colors carefully.
In this blog post, we’ll delve into the art of choosing captivating Brand Colors that resonate with your audience and effectively communicate your brand’s message.
What are Brand Colors and why it is so important?
Brand colors are a set of colors that represent your brand personality. It is also a reflection of corporate identity. Therefore, Brand colors have an important role to build a strong emotional connection with your customers.
According to a University of Loyola, Maryland study, color increases brand recognition by up to 80 percent.
The strong and instant impact that colors can give to customers is a crucial element that allows your business to stand out.
What is a color palette?
There are many kinds of color palettes for different industries. The color palette for branding is like the artist’s toolkit for a brand. It’s a set of carefully chosen colors that represent the brand’s personality and vibe. So every brand has (or should have) its own color palette.
Where are color palettes used?
The brand colors should be used consistently across various marketing assets:
- Logo
- Websites
- Business cards
- Advertisements
- Storefront
- Staff uniforms
- Print materials such as packages
Using the same colors across all platforms will have a direct effect to build your brand identity.
How to create a perfect brand color palette?
● Let’s think about your brand personality
It is easier to come up with brand colors if you know your brand personality. Think of your brand as a person. It is a good idea to start picking a few adjectives that remind your business. Here is an example:
● Let’s learn about color meanings
Remember, color affects people’s moods. Accordingly, it is worth learning about color psychology. However, the way everyone feels about colors is different. There is no definite answer like math. Here is a guideline for the emotional associations of each color. Please use it as a reference
Red — love, passion, anger, power
Yellow — joy, happiness, cheerfulness, optimism
Orange — excitement, enthusiasm, warmth
Green — health, generosity, compassion, calming effect
Blue — a high-quality, corporate, reliability, trust
Purple — mysterious, spiritual, imaginative
Pink — softness, immaturity, empathy, sensitivity
Brown — warmth, comfort, stability, security
Black — elegance, sophistication, control, seriousness
White — purity, innocence, cleanliness
Gray — neutral, balanced, practical
● Pick a primary bland color
Let’s select one main color that embodies your business like Coca-cola’s red or Tiffany’s Blue.
● Pick secondary bland colors
Next, pick 2-4 colors that go well with your primary color if you would like to have multiple colors. I recommend following the color scheme. These are four common color schemes:
The Monochromatic Color Scheme – uses variations of hue from one color by incorporating tints, tones, and shades.
A Complementary Color Scheme – uses two opposite colors on the color wheel. One of the colors is usually the primary color and the other color is secondary.
An Analogous Color Scheme – uses three colors next to each other on the color wheel.
The triadic Color Scheme – uses three colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel.
● Pick neutral bland colors
Neutral colors are as important as your brand colors. They are used mainly for background. They are usually white, black, or a few shades of gray.
Color Palette Generator tools
Choosing a brand color is not an easy task. It can be overwhelming for some people.
But do not worry. There are many tools that help you decide on the perfect brand color for your business. Here are my recommendations. Make sure to bookmark the site you like.
Color palette Generator from Canva
This color palette generator finds you a color scheme that perfectly matches an image you would like to use for your brand.
Just upload an image you would like to use and you will have the color scheme for your brand. This site also has an endless color palette combination resource.
Adobe Color from Adobe
This color generator gives you many color scheme options like analogous, Monochromatic, Triad, etc. You can also upload your preferred image to extract colors and create color schemes for yourself.
Color Hunt
Color Hunt can be one of the simplest and easiest tools to find your color. There are so many ready-made color palettes you can choose from and keep in your collection.
BrandColors
This site lists famous brands’ color palettes. Great site to get inspiration from successful companies, and research the best color palette from existing brands.
ColorHexa
If you know your primary brand color, this site gives you variable information about your primary color such as color conversion, shades, tints, color schemes, etc.
Colormind
This site is useful if you want to see what your website will look like when your brand colors are used. It let you generate a five-color palette. Click the color in the color palette and select the color you want.
Coolors
This site lets you generate a five-color palette and export the palette in many different formats. This is a good way to keep your brand color on your computer. You can also share it with your printer easily for printing purposes.
Khroma
If you are having a hard time finding your brand colors, Khroma can help you. Khroma uses artificial intelligence to learn which colors you like and creates unlimited color palettes for you. You can see your colors not only in the color palette, but also in the text, posters, images, and in gradients.
Conclusion
Choosing the right brand color palette can be challenging. However, it is essential that you have one when you start your own business.
Your brand colors are a key component to establishing your brand identity and building a good relationship with your target audience. Make sure that your brand color is memorable and recognizable so that you can captivate your audience’s attention.
