Why brand colours are important.
They say first impressions count. This is especially true when it comes to your brand since your brand colour is likely to be the first thing customers see. colours elicit emotions and feelings, plus they convey certain information. This enables customers to form an initial impression without even knowing what your product is about. Put simply, brand colours are powerful in helping customers decide whether or not they want to engage.
STEP 1: Understand what colours mean
A lot of research has gone into colour theory. You can definitely get lost down the rabbit hole finding the story behind each colour, however, here’s a quick summary to give you an idea:
Red is associated with danger, excitement, and energy. It’s also known for being the colour of love and passion.
Pink is feminine, it’s sentimental and romantic. Different shades, like hot pink, can be youthful and bold.
Orange, like it’s namesake, is fresh and full of vitality. It’s also creative, adventurous, and associated with being cost-effective.
Yellow is optimistic. It’s a colour associated with being playful and happy.
Green is natural, often used to demonstrate sustainability. But it can also align with prestige and wealth.
Blue is trustworthy and reliable. It’s calming or often associated with depression.
Purple is royalty and majesty. It can be spiritual and mysterious.
Brown is down-to-earth and honest, often used for organic wholesome products.
White is pure. It conveys simplicity and innocence, often with a minimalistic feel.
Black is both sophisticated and elegant. It can be formal and luxurious, but also sorrowful.
Multicolour is united or open to anything. It’s great for capturing the spirit of diversity.
Of course, within this spectrum, there is a raft of additional colours. Different hues, such as baby blue or navy, also contribute to the colour story. We’ll touch on this later in the article but for now, you should have a rough idea of what colours are best suited to your brand.
Interesting story: Google chose red, blue, and yellow because they are the primary colours, but they added green to show they don’t always follow the rules. This childlike palette makes technology seem less intimidating—appropriate for a company that prides itself on making things really easy to use.
STEP 2: Identify your brand essence
Richard Branson identified his brand when he chose Virgin’s vibrant red colour. It encouraged his own customers to be bold and confident, mirroring his own distinct business methods. So what colours best mirror yours?
First up, identify what your brand is about, as having a clear idea—what your brand’s goals are and how you want your target audience to feel—will help hone the best colours to choose for your brand.
Think about your brand in the following ways:
Brand goals: Do you want customers to be happy, to get rich, be more informed?
Target audience: Do you want them to feel positive, confident, or intelligent?
Personality traits: Is your brand fun, serious, or inspirational?
The way you want to be perceived by customers can help further narrow down your colour scheme. So while your product might be organic—a colour typically associated with brown—your brand essence might be about celebrating the goodness, in which case you may choose to go with optimistic yellow. Even better, you could feature both brown and yellow to be part of your brand colour palette (we’ll get to that later).
Steve Jobs chose white for two reasons. Passionate about design, Jobs knew white is the colour of purity, and so was in line with his vision of beautifully-designed products. The second reason was because of the competition. At that time, the dominant shade used by computer manufacturers was gray.
STEP 4: Create a brand colour palette.
Let’s face it, there are many shades of blue, so let’s look at the colours in context, both as an individual brand colour and within a palette.
Types of colour
Colour HuesThis refers to variations of the primary colours: red, yellow, and blue. As you'll probably recall, these three colours can create any other colour, depending on how they’re mixed.
colour ShadeThis is when black is added to a colour, and the amount of shade refers to the amount of black added.
Colour Saturation or toneThis is when you change a colour’s appearance by adding both black and white.
Colour CodesThere are three colour codes you need to be aware of to ensure your brand colours can be accurately replicated, no matter where they appear. You don’t need to understand these codes completely but you do need to know what your brand colours are in each format, appearing as a series of numbers for each colour.
CMYK and PMS: CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (black) while PMS stands for Pantone Matching System. These are used for printing, either off-set digitally.
RGB and HEX: RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue while HEX stands for Hexadecimal Numeral System. These are predominantly found on screens for things like websites and emails
Most brands have more than one colour. While the logo might be blue, the website might include yellow or green as well. This is called a brand palette, and important to have those colours work together in harmony.
Selecting a colour palette is tricky but you don’t need a designer to do it. A great starting point is Canva’s colour palette generator, which can help you define the colours you like as well as making sure they work well together. Another plus is that the generator provides the colour codes you’ll need.
Once you’ve done the research, found your colour, and created a palette of supporting colours, it’s time to put them into action. Across all your touchpoints, make sure your selected colours have the desired effect and will work in a variety of ways.
Here are some places where your brand colours can appear:
- Logo
- Website and emails
- Social media
- Advertising
- Instore
- Stationery
- Staff uniforms
- Events