How to Choose Your Brand Colors
THE BASICS
WHY BRAND COLORS MATTER
You may have a revolutionary new product to enter into the marketplace or a next level business concept—but without the right branding, you might not be able to get any traction, no matter how incredible your idea is.
While it may not be the first thing you think of, all successful brands have put a lot of time and effort into their brand color choices and rightly so. It’s been proven time and time again that the right brand colors can strongly influence customers’ perception and behavior surrounding your product or business and can take an idea to the next level.
HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR BRAND COLORS
USE COLOR THEORY
Color theory takes into consideration natural biological and cultural associations that people have to certain aspects of colors. When people are shown a flash of deep blue, their minds often drift to deep ocean waves or bodies of water, while light blues draw parallels to the sky.
These initial associations that we gravitate toward are hugely important when selecting your brand color choices as they are key drivers in consumer purchasing decisions.
To better understand your audience and consumer decisions, you can run focus groups or consumer testing to help you gauge what your audience might respond well to.
CREATE A MOOD BOARD
A mood board is essentially a collection of images that helps to steer your brand direction. Mood boards can be extremely influential in guiding your decisions as they help to organize your thoughts surrounding a particular topic and are commonly used for brand color choice.
Usually, mood boards are composed of photos, colors, typographies, shapes, patterns, and quotes that steer you in a succinct direction for your brand. Pinterest is commonly used for creating a mood board. Some prefer printing out and pinning their selections to a board for a more tactile approach.
CHECK OUT YOUR COMPETITION
When choosing brand colors, it’s important to take into consideration your competitors’ color choices as well. If you’re the first to enter into a new industry, you have first dibs on the colors available, however if you’re entering an already saturated market, you may want to either steer clear of previously used colors or take a similar approach to your competitors dependent on the industry.
Some industries naturally lead to certain selections. For example, a huge number of tech companies use shades of blues as they signify stability, strength, and trust. Other industries aren’t as tied to any particular selection. It’s key to take your brand identity into consideration and thoughtfully think through what you’re trying to convey to your audience.
CHOOSE THREE: BASE, ACCENT, NEUTRAL
Most brands use a combination of three separate colors to create a more intricate and involved color scheme. In order to choose these three colors, you have to think through what your end goal is. What are you trying to appeal to in your audience and what do you want your brand to represent?
Your base will usually be the most dominant and most often used color out of the three. This normally represents a bold quality about your brand.
The accent color will be the second most used color. As such, it has to pair well with the base color you’ve chosen so make sure these align well together.
Finally, your neutral color will likely be the easiest to choose. Most often, neutral colors are shades of grey, beige, white or off white. Sometimes black can be used as a neutral, but be cautious about this as it tends to distract from other colors when used too heavily.
EXPERIMENT
While there’s a plethora of theory out there to base your decisions on, keep in mind it’s your brand so you have every right to experiment. Play around with colors. Take risks. Break the rules. Get to know what you like and what you dislike. When it all comes down to it, these decisions are oftentimes made by trial and error.