Choosing the proper logo colors involves much more than just picking your favorite colors because your color scheme plays a crucial role in defining your brand’s identity.
Colors can affect our behavior and decision-making because they have a variety of meanings and can express a wide range of emotions and notions.
Choosing your brand’s color palette may seem difficult with such a wide range of colors available.
This article will explain how to choose the best color for your brand and how to comprehend the differences between each hue.
How To Pick The Ideal Color For Your Logo
Identify The Number of Colors Your Brand Should Use:
Did you know that according to a study, consumers subconsciously evaluate a product in under 90 seconds, with up to 90% of their evaluation based solely on color?
Color may also boost brand identification by 80%. Your brand colors offer a direct route to the hearts of your target audience if you want to foster a strong emotional bond with your customers.
You could first wonder how many colors you need to use to define your brand. While studying some of the most well-known brand color schemes in the world, it becomes clear that many of these palettes contain three essential components:
Basic Color: This is the color that dominates the brand. Hence, it should appeal to your target audience while reflecting your most significant brand personality feature.
Accent Color: The second-most significant brand color, after the base color, is the accent color. It must complement your base hue and be appealing to your target audience in addition to conveying another aspect of your brand.
Neutral Color: A neutral hue blends your color pallet subtly while not drawing undue attention to itself. Consider hues you would generally use for the background, such as various tones of white, beige, or grey.
Search for Complementary Colors Using The Color Wheel.
You’re going to get into a lot of concepts related to color theory and design when you go about developing a brand color palette. The color wheel, a diagram that shows the connections between fundamental colors and other hues, is a key idea to comprehend.
The discovery that clean white light is made up of seven visible hues, also known as the colors of the rainbow, by English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton in 1666 provides the basis for the color wheel. The color wheel’s fundamental features include the following:
Red, blue, & yellow are the three primary Colors. These colors cannot be blended with other colors.
Secondary Colors like purple, orange, and green. When primary colors are combined, these colors are produced.
Tertiary Colors, like aqua or violet, combine primary and secondary hues.
The two different color temperatures can alternatively be represented by dividing the color wheel in half:
- Purple, green, and blue are examples of cool hues. They are related to calm, peaceful emotions and cooler seasons like winter and spring.
- Reds, oranges, and yellows are examples of warm hues. They are connected to feelings of vigor, activity, and action, as well as warmer seasons like summer and fall.
- We can also identify three important color schemes by consulting the color wheel:
- Two colors that contrast one another are referred to as Complementary Colors.
- Three colors adjacent to one another are referred to as Analogous Colors.
- Three hues that are uniformly spaced apart on the color wheel are referred to as triadic colors.
Recognize The Connection Between The Company’s Personality And Color Scheme:
You are prepared to begin considering the colors for your brand now that you have some basic understanding of color theory.
Insights from the Journal of Consumer Research indicate that consumers appreciate companies that “fit” well into their lifestyles and that their preferred brands frequently become integral to their identities. One technique marketers may employ to communicate the essence of their brand, and its goal is color.
You should start by carefully considering your identity as a brand and the personality you transmit to your target clients to limit your palette.
For instance, a corporation with a lively brand personality would use a vivid and dynamic color palette, including pink and yellow.
On the contrary side, colors like blue and grey should be used to convey a more mature and serious brand identity.
Knowing common color associations will help you choose colors more quickly:
- Red signifies activity, vigor, vigor, and passion.
- Orange represents emotion, youth, hope, and zeal.
- Yellow: Joy, Positivity, Happiness, and Intelligence
- Green: peace, security, development, and wellbeing
- Blue represents safety, loyalty, trust, and responsibility.
- Purple symbolizes monarchy, mystery, spirituality, and creativity.
- Pink symbolizes empathy, love, femininity, and playfulness.
- Black represents strength, elegance, refinement, and safety.
- White symbolizes cleanliness, innocence, purity, and perfection.
- Gray: compromise, objectivity, restraint, and pragmatism.
- Brown: dependability, consistency, integrity, and comfort.
- Gold represents achievement, victory, luxury, and abundance.
- Silver represents fluidity, sensitivity, femininity, and mystery.
Consider Culture When Choosing Colors:
Color connections and preferences are strongly influenced by culture. White, for instance, is linked to happiness and cleanliness in Western nations but mortality in many Asian nations. Make sure your brand colors don’t have any bad associations in the nations where your core audience is based by conducting research in advance.
Colors to Consider While Choosing a Brand:
Did you know that certain colors work better in different businesses because of the messages and feelings they convey? The first step in selecting your brand colors is to understand your industry.
Red:
Red is a popular color option in the culinary, technological, automobile, and agriculture industries. Kellogg’s, Nintendo, and Ferrari are a few well-known examples of brands that use red in their logo and palette.
Orange:
Both businesses in the technology and healthcare industries favor orange as their corporate identity. Three examples of businesses in various sectors that use orange as their brand color include Firefox, Amazon, and GSK Consumer Healthcare.
Yellow:
When choosing a hue, firms that sell energy, food, or home items frequently use yellow. Shell, IKEA, and McDonald’s are well-known brands with yellow color schemes.
Green:
This is a popular brand hue in the energy, banking, food, household, and technology sectors. Green is a prominent hue used by three well-known businesses, including BP, Starbucks, and Android.
Blue:
Blue is among the most used hues in brand color schemes, especially for industries like energy, banking, aviation, tech, healthcare, and agriculture. They include Twitter, NASA, & Oral B, just three.
Purple:
Purple is popular throughout the banking, technology, and healthcare industries. Yahoo!, New York University, & Starlight Children’s Foundation are three examples of businesses that include purple as one of their brand colors.
Pink:
Within the technology, cosmetics, health, toy, and food-related industries, pink is a dominating brand hue. Only three companies, Taco Bell, Barbie, & Victoria’s Secret, use pink.
Black:
Businesses in the clothing, technology, and car industries frequently use black as one of their brand colors. Mercedes, Sony, and Nike are a few examples.
White:
White can be a dominant brand color even though it is neutral. This is especially true for fashion and healthcare firms. Examples include Adidas, Chanel, & GE Healthcare.
Brown:
Regarding branding, the fashion, automotive/transportation, and agricultural industries most frequently employ the color brown. Examples are Louis Vuitton, UPS, & Cotton.
Gold:
Gold is a recognized brand color for businesses in industries like fashion, gourmet cuisine, entertainment, and automobiles. Warner Bros. Pictures, Guess, and Lindt employ gold within their color schemes.
Silver:
A flexible trademark color, silver is frequently used in the media, technology, watchmaking, electronics, journalism, and video game industries. Disney, Bvlgari, and Star Wars are some brands that immediately come to mind.
Be Aware Of Your Brand’s Color Codes:
Because color plays a significant role in branding, you should maintain your selected color scheme throughout the computer, smartphone, and print. You achieve this by understanding your trademark colors’ applicable color codes: PMS, CMYK, RGB, and HEX.
.Proprietary, standardized color inks produced by the Pantone Corporation under PMS.
.A printing method known as CMYK uses a combination of tiny transparent dots in the colors cyan, magenta, yellow, & black.
.Red, green, & blue color combinations are used in RGB to display colors on a screen. Only digital applications use RGB.
.A six-digit number plus letter combination known as HEX (hexadecimal color) is produced by balancing the ratios of red, green, & blue (RGB)
Corporate Hues In Print:
Both print and digital mediums reflect color extremely differently compared to one another. You will represent colors using PMS or CMYK color types when publishing your brand colors, such as for a booklet or magazine advertisement.
Last Thoughts:
You’re prepared to finish your palette and successfully implement it into your company’s professional and custom logo design now that you understand how to pick the ideal colors for your brand.
Your company’s color scheme allows you to convey what your brand stands for while forging a deep emotional bond with your clients. There is no doubting the important role color plays in the success of your business because the majority of brand purchasing decisions are based on emotions.
The adage “initial impressions matter” is true. Your company’s brand colors, frequently represented by your logo, are the first thing customers will notice.
