When it comes to branding color choices for your brand are an integral part of success. Brand colors are seen in logos, websites, social media, emails, tradeshows, marketing, and storefronts. They are a huge part of the creation of your brand. Studies have shown that 85% of consumers base their purchasing decisions on color. What are your brand colors saying about you?
Brand colors provide that first impression, colors not only prompt feelings and emotions but also convey certain information. The psychology behind colors, is not only about choosing appealing colors, you also can use the psychology to benefit your marketing and branding strategy.
Emotions are powerful and whether consumers will admit to it or not, those emotions can drive decisions. Connections with colors and associations that are instantly made. A simple example is red roses indicate love and yellow roses are for friendship. The same flower in two different colors means two very distinct things, passion or friendship.
There is a large spectrum of colors and hues that alter meanings, however, let’s look at the most popularly used branding colors.
Red
Pink
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Purple
Brown
Black
Grey
White
Multicolor
The first step is to understand what your brand is about, what are your goals, what do you want your audience to feel when they see your palette choices.
You want to think about who your target audience is and get into what speaks to them. Gender can also be a consideration. Some colors speak more to women and men, and some can be less appealing. You want to evoke the right emotions that match your product or service. Their geographic location makes a difference when you are thinking about colors because what has an impression in the United States will be different overseas.
Brand colors tend to be built on 1 to 4 colors, typically 3 is a common choice. Start with choosing the base color. Your base color is the most dominant personality or trait of the brand. The other colors will work around this one.
All of the colors must work together and be a pleasing combination. The accent and neutral will need to stand on their own but speak to your target audience as well. Accent colors are the color your brand uses the most after your base color. Neutral colors tend to be the background color. A great place to start is Canva’s Color Palette Generator. A palette generator takes the color wheel idea into real life. These generators will not only give you a palette but the color codes that go with each specific color. Color codes are important so that when it comes to graphic and design work, the colors are always the same.
When you are considering your brand colors, you want to research what your competition looks like as you do not want to look identical. You may decide that you want one of the same colors however, the tone and hue could be very different so as not to appear identical. A very common occurrence within an industry that brands use the same base color. Financial Institutions tend to lean toward blue because it gives the emotion of trustworthiness, they all utilize the color and hue differently, but it is a common base choice. Some examples are Chase, Bank of America, and Citibank.
Creating a brand color scheme may sound complicated, however, it is about understanding the psychology behind colors and visually complementary colors. If you are unsure about the best choices for your brand, the GoMcIntyre team can help. We have designed color palettes that not only speak to your brand but create a connection with visitors and close sales.