Basics of Color Theory
Brand colors are responsible for how people interact with your business. According to Hubspot, 80% of product decisions are based on color alone. That's a lot, 80%!
Think about the biggest brands on the market and their icon colors. If you think about Coca Cola, you instantly think about their icon red bottles. When you think about Mcdonald's, the big yellow arch comes to mind. These brands did a fantastic job building a brand and establishing identity.
What are brand colors?
In a nutshell, brand colors are the colors a brand picks to show who they are, what they stand for, and who they want to connect with. These colors are super important because they bring everything together and make the brand unforgettable. They're like the secret sauce that creates a consistent and awesome brand experience.
Why brand colors matter?
The impact of brand colors goes beyond aesthetics. Colors have the ability to evoke specific emotions and influence consumer behavior. For example, warm colors like red and orange can stimulate appetite and excitement, while cool colors like blue and green can evoke feelings of calmness and trust. By understanding color psychology, you can strategically leverage the power of colors to create desired brand experiences.
How to choose the right color for your brand?
Before we jump into the meaning of each color, let's get started with the basics of color theory.
What are Primary Colors?
Blue, red, and Yellow. These colors can't be created when mixing other colors; hence these are your primary colors.
What are Secondary Colors?
Secondary colors are colors that you can get by mixing together your primary colors. Secondary colors are purple, orange, and green.
What color makes what?
Red and blue make purple.
Red and yellow make orange.
Blue and yellow make green.
What are Tertiary Colors?
You can create tertiary colors by mixing your primary and secondary colors together.
Understanding the Color Wheel
The color wheel is going to be your best friend when choosing and working with colors for your brand. There are plenty of websites that choose colors for you that harmonize together, but I recommend starting with a color wheel to understand what colors make sense for your business. You don't want a random generator creating your brand colors.
The meaning of colors
Now, if you would align colors in a circle, you get a color wheel. The color wheel, when split in half, will have warm colors on one side and cold colors on the other side.
Warm colors are associated with summer, coziness, and friendliness, whereas cold colors are associated with winter, fall, cleanliness, and seriousness.
When you think about interior design, for instance, you can make a room feel warm by utilizing warm colors and materials. The room will feel inviting and cozy. When using cold colors and materials, you can make the room feel more modern and clean. When combining warm with cold colors and materials, you can create a room that visually looks bigger, and you can make your furniture pop.
Use that knowledge to your advantage when creating graphics for your brand.
In order to create the perfect brand colors and utilize those colors in your marketing collateral, you want to understand the difference between pure colors, tints, and shadows.
Pure colors are those colors unaffected by white or shadows.
If you would mix white into any color, you would achieve tinted colors. Tinted colors tend to be brighter colors. Shadow colors, as the name indicates, are mixed with black and tend to be darker.
Using a combination of pure, tinted, and shadow colors makes your graphic pop and helps to accentuate important information.
Color harmonies
The possibilities are endless when it comes to color harmony. I am going to explain each harmony and how you can use them.
Complementary colors:
Complementary colors on the color wheel are the direct opposite of each other. For example, red and green or blue and yellow. Be careful when using complementary colors in a graphic. Both colors are strong, and you don't want them to confuse or overpower the viewer. Stick to the 80/20 spilt to create an image looks good.
Analogous Colors:
Analogous colors are next to each other on the color wheel. For example, combining shades of blue, green, or warm colors like orange. This color scheme creates a sense of calmness and knowledge without too much excitement. Think about nature and how the leave gradually change colors during fall. You want to use one dominant color, and the other colors should be used as accents.
Triadic Colors:
Triadic colors are three colors evenly spaced around the color wheel, forming a triangle. For instance, combining red, yellow, and blue or orange, green, and purple. This color combination creates a vibrant and balanced visual impact.
Monochromatic Colors:
Monochromatic colors involve using different shades, tints, and tones of one single color. This creates a cohesive and sophisticated look with varying levels of lightness and darkness. While your graphic looks cohesive, it may get overlooked online.
Split Complementary Colors:
Split complementary colors involve choosing a base color and combining it with two colors adjacent to its complementary color. For example, combining blue with orange and red. This color scheme provides a strong contrast while maintaining a sense of harmony.
Tetradic Colors:
Tetradic colors involve using four colors evenly spaced around the color wheel, forming a rectangle. This allows for a wide range of color combinations and provides a balanced and vibrant look.
Neutral Colors with Pops of Accent:
Using a neutral color palette as the base and adding pops of vibrant accent colors can create a clean and modern look. This allows the accent colors to stand out and draw attention to specific elements.
Now that you understand how to pair colors let's review the meaning of each color. Color can evoke positive and negative feelings, so you want to make sure you are choosing the right color for your audience.
The meaning of colors
Red
Meaning:
Love
Power
Stop
Be careful: Since red is such a powerful color, if used without explanation, it can have a negative impact on the viewer.
Blue
Meaning:
Trust
Loyal
Calmness
Be careful: If the color blue is overused or not paired with a brighter color, it can be perceived as cold and sad.
Green
Meaning:
Nature
Wholesome
Healthy
Be careful: Since almost every "clean" or "environmentally friendly" uses green, it can be perceived as boring and stereotypical.
Yellow
Meaning:
Fun
Exciting
Happy
Creativity
Be careful: If you use darker shades of yellow, they can be perceived as feeling sick.
Orange
Meaning:
Positive
Summer
Energetic
Be careful: Similar to the color yellow, the wrong shade of orange can make the viewer feel sick.
Pink
Meaning:
Young
Happy
Positive
Be careful: Pink has been marketed as a color for women. The overuse of pink can quickly turn drain and overwhelm the viewer.
Purple
Meaning:
Royalty
Spiritual
Creative
Be careful: Purple is a strong color and should only be used sparingly unless your graphic focuses on spirituality and healing.
Brown
Meaning:
Earth
Outside
Nature
Be careful: Brown is associated with nature. One shade of brown can look sophisticated, while another shade can look dirty. Think about paper bags, they convey environmentally friendly, but the trick is to use a light shade of brown to look clean and not dirty.
Black
Meaning:
Serious
Elegant
Formal
Be careful: When used as a background, be sure to pair it with vibrant colors in the foreground.
White
Meaning:
Clean
Pure
Be careful: White can also be associated with lacking empathy and looking sterile when not combined with other colors.
Metals:
Gold
Silver
Bronze
Meaning:
Glamour
Rich
Sophisticated
Winner
Be careful: Metellics are not considered colors but rather pigments that contain a powder that gives a metallic feel. On digital collateral, it is difficult to show the metallic feel of these metals.