How To Pick The Right Brand Colors

Colors are like superpowers, they’re instrumental in evoking emotions such as love, fear, anger, creativity, safety…and more. Whether we like it or not; emotions are powerful and they drive our decision making, if you really want to win the branding game you’ll have to create an emotional connection with your customers, & you can do this with color. What color comes to mind when you hear the word love? Have you ever wondered why? Why isn’t it the same color when you hear the word calm, intuition, or safe?. I won’t go into color psychology as that’s a whole different thread, but if you want to create a brand that has colors that speak to your industry / messaging or market here are some guidelines:

 

 

Research

What are your brand values? What’s the messaging? How do you want customers to feel when they come into contact with your brand? After you answer these questions go and look at your competitors, what colors are they already using? You’ll want a unique appearance for
our brand but you also need to make sure the colors you choose to feel right for your industry. You can draw inspiration from platforms like Pinterest or Instagram.

 

 

Color Tools

After you’ve done your research and have an idea about what color(s) communicate your brand well, you’ll need to visually experience what it would look like. As a designer I use coolors.co. However, you don’t need to be a designer to use it, pick your color(s), lock them in and it will start creating a palette based on your locked-in colors as you switch. You’re also able to export the palette with color codes and hand it to your designer so they get the exact tone.

 

 

Choose Your Primary Color

After your mind has gone for a color run, you’ll need to choose your primary color, this is your base brand color and the most dominant for your brand. Secondary & Accent: If you’ve got more than one brand color, it’s important to delegate which is your secondary or accent color (accent colors are used for emphasis and detail, they’re generally very bold, high contrast and help create rhythm in a color scheme.

Here are some examples:

 

 

60-30-10 Rule

If you’ve chosen three colors to use the 60/30/10 rule. Your main primary color should constitute 60% of your brand color, your secondary 30%, and your accent color 10%. Here’s an example below:

 

 

Neutral = Simplicity

Display your brand color on colors that are neutral or not saturated, which 90% of the time is either white, black, or grey. Below are some quick examples I designed: 1st Frame is what you should avoid at all costs.