The Power of Color and How it Impacts Your Business’ Branding
Choosing the right colors for your marketing collateral can make a big difference in your business branding. Will your company stand out or blend in?
The Institute for Color Research found that people make a subconscious judgment about an object, person, or environment within 90 seconds of initial viewing. 62 to 90 percent of that assessment is based on color alone.
Red Egg Marketing has long incorporated balanced, attractive, and effective business branding services for companies of all shapes and sizes. Our talented creatives know how important it is to consider every detail of a brand’s design in order to create long-lasting and powerful results.
There are 4 fundamental things our team at Red Egg feels every business owner should know when it comes to their brand’s color palette.
Basic Color Theory
Color theory takes the vast array of colors we all know and love and gives them a bit of structure. Color theory is one of the many concepts graphic designers use on an every-day basis to help create meaning behind each business branding design.
Let’s break it down:
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Primary colors, like red, yellow, and blue, can be mixed to create secondary colors, which are orange, green, and purple.
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White can be added to a color to create tints, and black can be added to colors to create shades.
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The lightness or darkness of a color is its value.
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Colors that are on opposite sides of the wheel are complimentary.
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Analogous colors are a little different—they’re right next to each other on the color wheel, instead. Since they have a lower contrast, they can be used to create a sense of harmony, balance, and continuity in a design.
Note:
Color Psychology
Unconscious or otherwise, color can evoke emotions, inspire reactions, and change modes of thinking. It can excite or soothe your mood, raise or lower your blood pressure, and even whet your appetite! These reactions are what color psychology is all about, and why it’s so important for graphic designers to know how it all works.
Here is a simple chart that breaks down the impressions and themes of each basic color:
By selecting specific colors strategically for your business marketing goals, you can get your audience to see what you want them to see regarding your brand. Perhaps you’re a tech company and you’d like to have your business branding to come off as trustworthy and reliable in order to attract new clients. Consider incorporating brown into your brand colors. Perhaps you own a bakery, and you want to inspire creativity and cheer when your customers walk in. In this case, it would be a great idea to try weaving yellow into their brand’s color scheme.
Pro Tip
The psychology of color is an expansive subject, but luckily, the internet has some great tools that can make it much less overwhelming. Canva’s interactive tool is great for getting a foundational understanding of different colors and the emotions they bring about when it comes to your business branding.
Brand Accessibility
Getting more people to recognize and get excited about your brand is everything when it comes to achieving success. Reaching as many people as possible is an obvious way to do this, so you may want to think about aligning your color palette and graphics with proper accessibility standards.
An easy way to make this happen is to make sure that your designs have sufficient contrast between text and background colors.
Food for Thought
Making the effort to do this is not just for people who have low vision or certain eye conditions. It’s also for people with older and cheaper devices, times when there’s direct sunlight or glare on screens, and when we’re in dark environments.
Not sure if your business branding colors meet accessibility standards? Try downloading Stark, which will check if your designs are accessible or not. This cool program also enables you to simulate color blindness and adjust as needed with their plugin.
Business Branding by the Pros
Well thought out brand colors are key to any successful business’ branding strategy. Without one, you can’t have the other. Don’t sacrifice quality branding for the sake of keeping your business afloat. Red Egg Marketing’s branding experts can work with you to achieve the best of both worlds: a bold brand and a fair price.
