Choosing The Right Colors For Your Brand: A Handy Guide

Anyone who has even a small idea of how business works, knows that the level of success a brand or business achieves is highly dependent on the branding strategy which they employ, which is supposed to portray their message to their potential clients in such a way as to make a positive and lasting impression in the minds of their target audience. And this factor increases in importance based on the level of competition in that market segment. 

 

Now, visual appeal is a major part of any branding strategy, and colors used for that should have the desired effect. Choosing the right colors can help a business give off the right vibe and amplify the message it is trying to portray. Therefore, knowing what colors go with your expected brand image is very important. 

 

If we observe the big, and coincidentally hugely successful brands, we can see that their visual materials, either digital or print, employ a uniform color scheme across all their used mediums. Whether its websites, social media pages, logos and letterheads, business cards, or other printed material, all of them will have the same color theme. That is because it helps with making a brand and its material memorable and easily identifiable and relatable. It helps the clients cultivate a sense of trust with the brand, which is useful when the target of the branding strategy is to have the customer get the right idea about the business. So we can say that colors have a strong position in the brand development strategies of all successful brands. 

 

Brand Colors – What are they?

Now, you might be wondering what is meant by the phrase “Brand colors”. What that means is the colors which a brand uses across all their materials and properties, and by which they want to associate themselves in the minds of their customers. Those colors may be used on their digital platforms such as websites or social media accounts, or used within their logos and packaging materials, even used in their printed materials such as flyers or other promotional content. 

 

Some brands may even use these colors as the base paint theme in their physical stores. Examples of this include the red and yellow theme of fast food giant McDonalds, or the blue and yellow of IKEA. Seeing these colors used together automatically makes us relate it to these brands at the first glance, whether what we are seeing is related to them or not. 

 

The colors you choose for your brand have the all-important task of conveying your message the best way possible. The first impression of your brand is almost always visual, and choosing the right colors will also help you stand out from your competition, as well as play an important part in building your brand identity. So the colors you choose for your brand will herald your brand’s message from all visual mediums, print or digital. 

 

Another use of the correct colors is that they have a way of eliciting certain emotions from those who view it. So not only can you convey your message by using the right color theme, you can also make sure that those who view your material will also feel the same emotions that you want them to feel. That can be done easily, as people generally react to colors universally the same, no matter where they hail from. This field of study, called color psychology, is now quite in demand with many a branding agency, just due to this fact, as it can be used to actively manipulate what the viewer sees and thinks about your brand, just using the right colors.

 

Looking at brands like Coca-Cola which uses a deep red color, to Google which uses a mix of red, green, yellow and blue, we can see that brands have got these color mixes associated with their brands, and just looking at them automatically makes our minds relate to them. So obviously, these color choices were not random or arbitrary. These brands put in a lot of effort into researching what colors would work best for their brands based on their target market and the potential customers’ preconceptions, and used it to find the best choice for their needs to good effect. 

 

Choosing the right colors:

There are various phases to choosing the right color combination that would be perfect for your brand. Let’s have a look at what some of the most important of these factors are, according to us.

 

– Understand the Colors

As said before, colors have the potential to influence our emotions, and how we feel about what we are seeing. Each color elicits a different emotion from us, which can be used to boost our brand’s message’s impact. So, choosing the colors that properly portray our message is very important when designing our branding strategy.

 

Nowadays, people and designers can access a whole lot of research on the effect of different colors on the human psyche, which is called the color theory, and can be used to great effect to select the perfect colors which can help you promote your brand successfully. 

 

Red color is generally associated with heated emotions such as love, passion, energy and danger. Pink has feminist overtones, while its variant vivid pink, also called hot pink is usually used to denote feminist youthfulness. Green is for nature, or conversely related to money and sustainability. Black is elegance, purple regality, and white purity. The list goes on, and finding the right colors can be made easy with this. You can use a single color, or you can use a combination of these colors to properly boost your visual appeal.

 

– Understand the Personality of the Brand

 

Knowing the right colors and their shades can only come if you understand what the brand is all about. That can help you finely choose which shades or colors will work best in your strategy, so finding out the brand’s personality is important. Whether the brand is sophisticated, playful, elegant, or down to earth, each personality can make use of different colors to boost their message. 

 

Another important aspect is the goals that the brand has. What is the purpose of this brand currently in the market, and what does it hope to achieve in the long run. Specify how you want your customers, both potential and existing, to look and perceive your brand and its imagery. An example can be a brand that makes biodegradable products, can benefit from a sustainability or green-effect vibe from its visuals. That makes the use of green in your visual mediums something that can help you portray that essence of your brand. It can be combined with yellow or brown to give it a general goodness and sustainability vibe as well, to round off the entire effect. So, this shows that knowing the brand is of utmost importance as well when choosing the branding colors. 

 

Following these points, and others, you can come to the right decision about your brand’s perfect color scheme. The thing to remember is to be flexible and experiment with different colors and their combinations during the testing stage, so that you do not neglect any avenue in selecting the right palette for your brand.

 

After you have finalized your color theme, then you can go ahead with the logo design and other visual materials, so that the finalized color scheme can be properly incorporated into all your materials properly. 

 

If you are in the market for an innovative branding services provider, look no further than Logo Magicians. Their expert designers and branding teams are experts at developing exquisite branding strategies that are designed to leverage your brand’s potential to the max.

 

Also Read: 6 Logo Design Trends for 2021