- When you walk down your street and you’re faced with the brands which display their logos outside stores, your brain will be scanning them and figuring out what they are before your conscious mind becomes aware of it. One of the first things your brain will pick up on is the color - which is why choosing the right color for your brand is so important. That color will be associated with your company, your values and your product.
The range of colors you can choose from is vast, and there are no limits based on industries. However, some colors might be better suited for some industries than others. Electric pink, for example, might work well with a young, fashion-focused consumer brand, whereas it would most likely work less well for a financial institution. So if color is so important, how do you go about choosing it?
Search the existing knowledge
There is plenty of research available online which talks through how colors are used in marketing and how different demographics respond to colors in varying ways. So the first place is to start is by defining your company values and who exactly you are trying to reach. Try focusing on questions such as
• What color represents your brand’s personality?
• What color suits the characteristic of your product?
• What colors are used by other participants in your industry?
These questions might give you a good starting point from which you can derive your company’s own color scheme.
There is plenty of information which can help you to define the answers to these questions. Think about choosing a color which is the opposite from your closest competitors to ensure that you are easily identifiable in the crowd. Also make sure that you pay close attention to any cultural significances in the colors you choose. Greens might represent freshness and crispness while red and black might be something more heated. What kind of personality are you trying to appeal to, and what kind of values are you trying to communicate?
The embodiment of your ideals
One of the most important things to remember is to ensure that your colors differentiate you. Colors are much more than a mixture of red, green and blue. Colors embody emotions and evoke reactions and they will be so entrenched with your brand that the two are barely separable. So you should make sure that the colors you choose are consistent with your ideals.
You’re not limited to using one color, but you should aim to use a maximum of three, complementary colors. When you’ve chosen your color scheme, stick to the 60-30-10 rule. This rule states that you use three colors in the ratio of 60%, 30% and 10%. in order to create a professional color scheme for your brand.
You might want to also consider where these colors will be seen. Have you checked out how they look on computer monitors, on t-shirts, on your stationery? All of these factors will affect the colors you choose.
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