The Learning Center

It is well known that color has meaning and conveys a mood. But have you ever wondered what color can mean for your business’s brand? If you chose a color palette for your brand based on your favorite color, you may want to reconsider that decision. Whether you intended to or not, by assigning a color to your brand, you have created a psychological connection between you and your audience. The question is, are you creating the right emotional response? Or, are you subconsciously sending people away? With the right branding color palette, you can cause your audience to perceive you the way you want your brand to be perceived, whether that’s to be fun, professional, healthy, etc. Take a look at the psychological perceptions associated with each main color that may appear in a brand’s color palette and see if you’ve picked the right one for your business.

Red

Red often portrays the feeling of youth, boldness, sexiness, or elegance, as well as grabs attention. Well-known brands that use red include Coca-Cola, Netflix, Nintendo, LEGO, and ESPN.

Blue

Blue is a trustworthy and reliable color that exudes professionalism. Common brands that succeed with blue are Facebook, Samsung, VISA, Wal-Mart, and Ford.

Yellow

Like the sun, yellow makes people feel optimistic, cheerful, happy, energized, and nourished. Lipton Tea, McDonald’s, SubWay, Snapchat, and Best Buy all use yellow to make customers feel good about buying from them.

Green

Because of it’s relation to nature and the color of money, green is used to represent things like growth, health, freshness, fertility, wealth, financial growth, eco-friendliness, and nature. Brands like Starbucks, Subway, and Whole Foods use green to reflect their health/freshness, while John Deer and Animal Planet use it to represent their connection to nature.

Orange

Orange is used by brands who want to appear friendly and confident. Examples of brands who use orange as their branding color palette are Fanta, Home Depot, Payless, and Harley Davidson.

Neutral (black, white, or gray)

With so many colors out there, sometimes it’s just as good to brand yourself without a bright color. Neutral colors like black, white, or gray show professionalism, high quality, calm, intelligence, authority, and a premium service or product. Such brands include Apple, Nike, GUCCI, Loreal, HERMES Paris, and Coach. Gray can be timeless and classic; black shows elegance, modernism, authority, and sophistication; and white in a color palette can represent purity, cleanliness, or innocence.

Multi-Colors

For some brands, one or two colors isn’t suitable for their branding color palette, because they need to represent diversity and stand out. By using a multi-colored palette, a brand can show that they are to be used by all sorts of people, regardless of race or gender.  Brands who use multi-colors include Google, eBay, NBC, and the Olympics.

Other Things to Consider

1. Aside from the psychology of your brand’s color palette, there are other things to keep in mind when choosing a color. For instance, you can choose more than one color, but don’t exceed more than 3 unless you are choosing the multicolor approach.
2. Of those colors, only one should be an accent color. For example, Pepsi uses red, white, and blue in its branding palette, but blue is the accent color used for the biggest areas such as the color of the can.
3. Use your color scheme consistently throughout everything such as your website, logo, and print materials.
4. Don’t let the psychology of your color restrict you too much.
5. Keep in mind that colors used together may create a different message than one color will alone. While you may want to use red to show boldness and blue to show reliability, the 2 combined, especially with white, may end up sending a more patriotic message.

Find Inspiration

If you are struggling to figure out which color palette will best suit your brand, you can always look for inspiration from things that make you feel what you want your customers to feel about you. To pick out the exact colors, you can use Adobe Color CC that allows you to get the exact shade of color from real life. So if you find that a corn field gives you the feeling your brand should emit, Adobe Color CC will pick out every shade of yellow, green, and brown for you to choose from.

Establishing the perfect color palette for your brand is very important. If you need help branding your business with a color palette that will translate your message to your audience, contact our team. We’ll know just how to help.

Titan Web Marketing Solutions based in Murfreesboro, TN provides Custom Logo Design Services to businesses throughout the United States. If your company needs logo design help Contact Us today.