So why is a colour palette so important? You want your customers to A: recognise you among the busy world of social media, and B: instantly vibe with what you are all about. eg. your brands core values or personality. Your branding colour palette should be carefully considered and not just selected because the colours are your favourites.
Knowing who you want to attract and what your brand values are, allows you to decide on the best colour palette for your brand - eg. earthy and sustainable, or fun and playful - or earthy and fun all have a different colour palette. Colour also communicates emotion - so you are communicating what your business is all about while also keeping in mind peoples tastes and associations with colour.
Think about your brand in the following ways:
Brand goals: Do you want customers to be happy, to get rich, be more informed?
Target audience: Do you want them to feel positive, confident, or intelligent?
Personality traits: Is your brand fun, serious, or inspirational?
Another thing to keep in mind when selecting your branding colours is considering your competition. If you want to stand out from the crowd and forge your own path, be careful not to fall into the trap of looking like everyone else.
What's the next step?
Once you have established your brand strategy and identity ( please get in touch if you need assistance with this) you will have a clear set of words or phrases to summerise your brand. Go tp Pinterest.com and start a board where you to do a 'brain dump' of all the images that resonate with these words. Use home decor, fashion, textures, colour palettes, graphic design, packaging, logo design and more. Really open up you can't get this wrong as this is just the brainstorming phase. Once you have a board full - Pinterest will also start to make suggestions for you to better find more options in the same visual field. At this point you will start to see some trends and you can section off your board into, colour, tone, and type as these are the main visual ways your brand will be represented.
Creating the mood board
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Once you have weeded out your Pinterest board the next step is to take the best bits and create a collage of the images from your various categories. Once this is complete you will have the colour palette in front of you and it's just a matter of playing around with the options to cherry pick the best combination to summerise your new brand in an authentic way.
You want to keep in mind your target audience throughout this process, so your are communicating your brand values but also appealing to your customers tastes. Once you or your designer has put together a palette, test it with your customers or target demographic and see what their feedback is. Just like when we are testing a product or service in our business we also can take the time to ask how they feel about your chosen colours and what they feel they are communicating about your brand. There are so many shades and tones of any given colour and current trends in homeware and fashion affect the emotional connection to colour. To appear modern and fresh it's important to take these into consideration as well.
What do to with your new colour palette?
Do a photoshoot wearing your signature brand colour.
Re-brand your website so this colour shines through.
Add this colour into your social media accounts, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.
By doing this, you’re creating an iconic looks and feel for your brand without having to have your logo embedded on everything you share.
Types of colour
Colour Hues
Variations of the primary colours: red, yellow, and blue.
Colour Shade
Adding black to a colour, and the amount of shade refers to the amount of black.
Colour Tint
Adding white to make the colour lighter.
Colour Saturation or tone
Changing a colour’s appearance by adding both black and white.
So what are the takeaways from all This? Pick one main unique colour that clearly attracts your target audience with emotion. Then we work together to create a complimentary palette and a look and feel for the brand where we work this colour in, in a unique and authentic way.
If you would like more information about colour theory and branding please get in touch and I would love to assist.
Zoe
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