Craft an Emotional Color Palette that Conveys your Brand’s Personality in 6 Easy Steps

Color Meaning

Let’s explore how colors can communicate a message and impact people differently. Check out this brief rundown of what we can learn about the meanings behind brand colors:

• Red — Red stands for passion, excitement, and anger. It can signify importance and command attention.
• Orange — Orange stands for playfulness, vitality, and friendliness. It is invigorating and evokes energy.
• Yellow — Yellow evokes happiness, youth, and optimism but can also seem attention-grabbing or affordable.
• Green — Green produces stability, prosperity, growth, and a connection to nature.
• Light Blue — A light shade of blue exudes tranquility, trust, and openness. It can also signify innocence.
• Dark Blue — Dark blue stands for professionalism, security, and formality. It is mature and trustworthy.
• Purple — Purple can signify royalty, creativity, and luxury.
• Pink — Pink stands for femininity, youth, and innocence. It ranges from modern to luxurious.
• Brown — Brown creates a rugged, earthy, old-fashioned look or mood.
• White — White evokes cleanliness, virtue, health, or simplicity. It can range from affordable to high-end.
• Gray — Gray stands for neutrality. It can look subdued, classic, serious, mysterious, or mature.
• Black — Black evokes a powerful, sophisticated, edgy, luxurious, modern feeling.

Keep Culture in Mind when Choosing Colors

The color choice of your business can be greatly impacted by the region in which it operates and sells. It’s important to be mindful of this – after all, the last thing you want is to send the wrong message or upset your target audience.

Here’s a quick overview of how colors convey meaning and affect people in different countries;

• White is the color of purity and perfection, thanks to religion (white wedding dresses) and the mythical idea of the white knight.
  • For other cultures, white is associated with death, ghosts, and phantoms.
• Red is a lucky color in Chinese culture.
  • In Indian culture, red is an auspicious color worn by the bride on her wedding day.
• South Africans associate red with mourning.
  

 Color Theory

As you’re picking out your branding colors, ask yourself what kind of color scheme you’re aiming for. Not sure what works? Many brands go with one of these popular options:

• Analogous —Colors next to each other on the color wheel have a very pleasant relationship – they tend to evoke similar feelings and emotions. Using an analogous scheme is a great choice if you’re looking for a safe bet, but it might not be the most eye-catching option to draw attention!
• Complementary — Colors that are polar opposites on the color wheel are called complementaries. When put together, these “opposites” really set each other off to look their best – think sports teams! This dynamic combination can really help capture attention and make an impact, BUT only use these beloved pairings if you’re aiming to express your unique brand and not just copying someone else.
• Monochromatic — If you want to really emphasize one particular personality trait with your brand, using a monochrome colour scheme can be great if you’re going for a minimalist feel. The trick here is making sure you differentiate the hues enough that your audience won’t get bored looking at your branding.
• Triadic — If you’re looking for a stable color scheme for branding purposes, triadic colors are a great option! This style pulls from equal parts of three different sectors of the wheel, and it blends the best of analogous (which is a pretty safe choice) and complementary schemes (which provide a bit more visual stimulation). The toughest aspect is making sure your three chosen colors are actually accurately representing your brand.

Image sourced from Scyapinc.org

Color Application

Color Consistency is Key

Make sure to keep your selected palette uniform on desktop, mobile, and print. To make this possible, it’s helpful to know the correct colour codes for each colour that you chose for your brand – PMS, CMYK, RGB, and HEX. This will help keep your look consistent and help you to make sure your brand vision is achieved!

• PMS (Pantone® Matching System): patented, standardized color inks manufactured by the Pantone Corporation
• CMYK: a printing technique that uses a mixture of small transparent dots in four ink colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black
• RGB: a method of displaying colors on-screen using red, green, and blue color combinations. RGB is exclusive to digital applications
• HEX (hexadecimal color): a six-digit number and letter combination determined by the proportions of red, green, and blue (RGB)