October 2020
Choosing Brand Colors: How to Make an Impact with Color
Choosing the right brand colors can help you connect with your audience emotionally.
Brand Consistency
The importance of brand consistency is a whole topic within itself, however, your brand colors are an important part of helping to achieve a consistent look and feel. You can use the same logo, the same fonts, the same imagery, but your colors are so much more powerful. Colors help tie in all the elements that make your visual brand. Which leads me on to the next important value, brand recognition.
Achieving Brand Recognition
Running a business in a competitive market is hard, trust me. But, aiming to be successful with an unrecognisable brand in that same competitive market, is almost impossible. You want your brand to have an edge, something that makes people say “Oh, that business with the…”. The association of who you are as a person or brand is closely related to your color choices.
Associating an Emotion
The psychology of colors is a powerful and detailed topic within itself. But the concept is that each color has an emotion tied to it. These emotions are the feeling your audience will relate to and feel when they interact with your business. For example blue is a color that exudes trust, while green creates a feeling of growth. Choosing the right brand colors can help you connect with your audience emotionally.
Connecting with your Target Audience
Your target audience, the people you serve. The single most important reason for strategically choosing brand colors are the people who benefit from your business. Think about who these people are, what are their likes and dislikes? How would that person react to specific colors. There is a lot to unpack here, but for a very good reason. Having a consumer-focused brand strategy will lead to a sustainable brand for years to come. Learn more about why your audience is key to a successful brand.
Your Brand Archetype
A brand archetype is a symbol of the personality your brand represents. Once you have determined what Archetype your brand falls under, the appropriate brand colors become clearer to identify.
Hopefully, you can see now that colors go beyond aesthetics and hold a deeper meaning behind them, especially in your brand strategy. But, how can you put yourself in a position to represent your brand in the right way, through glorious colors?
Aiming to be successful with an unrecognisable brand in that same competitive market, is almost impossible.
How to Make an Impact with Color
Know your brand
Get back to basics and understand your brand inside out. What do you sell, who do you serve and what are your values? With this information, you can start to create a brand personality. Which leads to brand emotions. What emotions do you want your brand to invoke on your audience?
Explore Possible Brand Colors
Once you’ve established these fundamentals of your brand, then and only then should you embark on selecting appropriate colors to match that brand’s emotions, value and personality.
A great place to start would be Adobe’s free color tools available at color.abode. Here you have the option to create a color palette on your own from scratch or explore palettes curated by other designers to get a feel for how you would want your brand to look. My favourite feature is the ability to search for an emotion such as: happy, or luxury and be shown various palettes that exude these emotions.
Invest in your brand identity
If the idea of the branding process seems complex, but you know it’s important for your brand to be taken seriously with strategic thought and consideration, I can help.
Consider working with us on your branding project and be excited to present a unique visual identity that your customers can relate and connect with. View our branding packages and get in touch to find out more.