When you think of internationally known brands such as Facebook, Starbucks, McDonald’s, or Tim Hortons, to cite a few, you can immediately associate the colours associated with these brands. To illustrate, Facebook is blue, and Starbucks is green. With McDonald’s, you not only think of yellow, you visualise its signature yellow arches. Think of Woolworths and you see a green apple represented by a stylised “W”.
This should get you thinking about if colours do matter. What power does it have, and how does it shape brands? As visual creatures, colours are the first thing people notice, and it can’t be overstated how important colours are in establishing a visual identity.
Not convinced? Let’s veer away from business branding for a second. Think of the late Steve Jobs, what immediately comes to mind is a bespectacled fellow in a BLACK long-sleeved turtleneck, blue jeans, and grey sneakers.
There is a common perception that Steve did not put much thought into his outfit. However, they are utterly mistaken. The fact is, he chose this everyday look because it suited his personality well. His look became the personal brand that he was known for.
Now translate the same scenario for your brand. Your choice of brand colours increases brand recognition, which has a great influence on stirring the mood and perception of your potential customers.
Our highly artistic and skilled graphic designers at Accentuate Web Design and Marketing know the importance of using the power of colours in your branding. We have helped hundreds of clients in all aspects of branding from logo design and other company branding assets to make it cohesive, appealing, recognisable and more importantly, memorable for your customers.
With our graphic team’s experience, we can synchronise colour palettes and branding through all your content and design. This ensures consistency which leads to having your brand and company be easily identifiable through a unique branding experience.
Through the power of colour, it can affect and direct the decision-making process of a customer. It can instantly identify your company, as illustrated above, your product lines, and the quality of your brand’s merchandise. Businesses should consider the psychological impact that colours can have to influence potential customers.
What is a Brand Colour Palette?
There has been a growing interest in the psychological impact of colour on marketing and branding. Have you purchased a product from a brand lately? Do you remember the colour of its logo? The likely answer is yes – and you likely remember it more than the price of the product itself.
Colour palettes and colour theory are no longer exclusive tools for artists. It is now a necessity that everyone involved in marketing to grasp the basics, at the least. It is crucial to understand that it can have positive and negative impacts on your marketing.
A brand colour palette is a set of colours that you feel represent your brand personality. They are a key component of a brand’s visual identity.
Your brand colour palette plays a key role across your various marketing assets – from the way you create your company/brand logo, to the design of your website, and much more. The consistent use of your brand colours across all platforms results in a unified look and feel to your business, making them memorable and easily recognisable.
Why is Brand Colour Palette Important?
Colour plays a crucial role in marketing. It is among the first things your target market sees that play a significant role in your consumer’s behaviour. Colours are great brand identifiers, and it’s important to choose colours that relate to your brand.
Studies revealed that our minds prefer brands that are easily identifiable, which makes colour an important element in brand identity creation.
Therefore, this places a high value on understanding the importance of colour selection when it comes to marketing. When it comes to deciding what colours you want for your brand, there are no clear-cut rules.
Here is where the artistry, experience, and expertise of Accentuate Web Design and Marketing’s graphic designers come in. They are highly experienced and have worked on numerous branding projects with consistent success.
How Brand Colour Palettes are used.
Colours are valuable tools in a branding toolbox. It creates impact, it sells, persuades, and cajoles. It is a component of a brand’s identity system.
Some main applications of brand colours include your company’s logo, website colour scheme, social media channels, business card and stationery design, your print and digital ads.
This also applies to the use of typesets or fonts, textures, photos, and images. Brand colour palettes also can be applied to a physical store’s colour scheme and design, staff uniforms, product packaging, and more.
Colour is extremely powerful, especially on the web, where there is a need to convey your brand without the need or benefit of you being there in person. It’s a fact that consumers prefer buying from brands they recognise.
The easiest way to do this in building brand recognition is to apply your brand colours consistently across all of your marketing collateral. A brand style guide can make this task much easier.
It also ensures that everyone across your organisation has quick access to exact colour codes, including guidelines on when and where to use particular brand colours to keep your brand identity consistent.
What this all amounts to, at least for branding, is to carefully choose your branding colours, since it has a direct influence on your brand identity. Therefore, before you even get into which colours you want to represent your brand, you must decide your ideal brand personality.
Tips to Create a Brand Colour Palette.
You can pick colours and create a successful brand colour palette with a few simple steps. Once you’ve worked through them, you’ll then be able to apply your chosen brand colour palette across all of your collateral, as we have already mentioned in the sections above.
1. Identify your Brand Personality.
You’ll need to lay in some groundwork before you even think about picking your brand colours. A brand personality is your brand’s distinct character that you’d want to project to your audience to communicate with them. It’s a set of attributes that humanises your brand as if it were a living, breathing person.
Begin by listing down a few adjectives describing your business. The best way to get an accurate read of your business is by talking to a few of your most enthusiastic customers.
Having your top customers tell you what they love about your business will give you insights into what and how your brand comes across to them. Or you can get colleagues to do the same exercise and supplement it with a bit of background research on your competitors within the same niche.
At the end of this process, you should be able to come up with at least 3 to 5 adjectives that describe your business to a tee.
Once you have a clear understanding of your brand’s personality, you can then associate those adjectives to communicate those traits through the use of colour. Bringing us to…
2. Pick your Core Brand Colour based on your Brand Personality traits.
Once you can identify your key brand personality traits, you can then find one colour that embodies those traits. This is where colour psychology comes into play. It helps us understand traits that people generally associate with common colours.
Have you ever wondered why financial institutions and tech companies tend to have blue brand colours? Cool colours evoke feelings of stability, loyalty, and trust. Trust and stability are critical for financial institutions to convince consumers that they can be trusted with their money.
However, it is important to note that colours are highly dependent on culture, personal experience and the context of how these colours are used and applied among many other things. But they can be a great jumping-off point for picking your core brand colour. For these reasons, it’s important to also define your ideal consumer as well.
3. Build the perfect Brand Colour Scheme.
Once you have your core brand colour picked out, you can then start building a colour scheme that will work uniquely with your brand. You may explore and use an easy-to-use tool such as Adobe Color, which can help you with mixing and matching colours that work together.
Netflix and Spotify, for example, have a bright dominant brand colour supplemented with a few grounding neutrals. The effect is quite striking, they are effective and memorable.
Fact is, in a study conducted by Adobe of the world’s top 100 brands, the majority of these top brands use only one or two brand colours. So don’t go crazy splashing colours everywhere when you don’t need to or without meaning to. Keeping it simple and sticking with a core brand colour will work pretty well.
However, if you want a little more oomph, add a contrasting accent colour that complements your core brand colour. Think Pepsi with its blue core colour contrasted with red. Doesn’t it just pop?
One good thing about having an accent colour is that they are great for making CTAs, stats, or infographics you may use on your website and any other collateral.
You can even go a step further by balancing out your core colour choice with 3 to 4 equally vibrant hues. Think of Google or Canva. Their type of colour scheme makes their brand feel fun and approachable.
Looking Ahead
It’s useful to understand the importance and the psychology that goes into using colours when creating your brand identity. A distinct brand identity is a crucial element in your goal towards success for your business.
With brand colours, not only will you be able to build your brand’s aesthetic and bring out its personality and unique identity, but also bring you closer to your target audience.
Do your colour choices for your brand align with the feeling you’re trying to convey to your prospects and customers? If you feel like it, talk to our graphic design experts. We’d love to hear why you chose the colours for your brand. Perhaps we can help you improve it better by booking a FREE Strategy session with our team to review your brand’s visual concept.
