Color plays a significant role in improving your brand image and recognition. It is more than just polishing your brand look. It can evoke emotions and encourage people to engage more with your brand. When your brand colors cannot achieve those goals, it only means that some things do not sit right.
It is only natural that you think over and over again in determining the right colors for your brand when you take those consequences into account. Besides, you also have to consider the business you run. Don’t let you give the wrong signal that your target market doesn’t catch the message you convey through the colors.
Business Types and Their Color Associations
Before creating brand colors, you, at least, must have basic information about colors associated with some business types. It will help you determine the primary colors to use in your brand. Some of these colors will give a sense of familiarity with brands or businesses.
Food Industry
If you are aware enough of food businesses around you, you will find that many of them use warm colors, such as red, orange, or yellow, as the basic color. It aims to draw attention and evoke appetite. Brands concerned about health, good nutrition, and well-being, involve green to promote the campaign. Meanwhile, for sweets and desserts, many choose bright colors, like pink, light blue, or purple, as they connote rich flavors.
Health & Wellness Industry
Blue is the major color in this industry since it can signify cleanliness, trustworthiness, and responsibility. You can see real examples in hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, or other health & wellness’ branding. Green, with different shades used in the food industry, is another option to represent nature and wholesomeness. To bring up the ideas of vitality and energy, some use orange as one of their brand colors.
Finance Industry
Like health and wellness, blue is the primary color in finance branding. It conveys the feeling of trust, security, and reliability. The second one is the color of money, green, which symbolize prosperity and innovation. You can find the application of those colors in bank logos, fintech apps, and other finance-related businesses. Other common colors used in this industry are black for luxury and professionalism, red for passion and energy, and yellow for happiness, friendliness, and affordability.
Fashion & Beauty Industry
When we talk about the richness of brand colors, the fashion & beauty industry has a large range of selections. Even so, the dominant colors used have warm and bold tones. However, among those colors, black is the most common to show sophistication and glamour. Red, orange, and pink are the next in line. They represent confidence, excitement, and passion.
High-Tech Industry
High-tech is often associated with futuristic things dominated by cool colors. And again, blue is the main choice for branding in the high-tech industry. In this industry, blue represents intelligence, efficiency, and trust. As additional colors, you will find orange to show friendliness and optimism and purple to show quality and creativity.
Steps to Take to Create Your Own Brand Colors
Learning the basics is a must as your starting point. The next step you have to take is learning how to create your own brand colors. The guide below will help you to create one.
Determine Your Brand Identity
As you can see from the business and its color association, color represents a brand image. Thus, before you choose colors for your brand, you must determine your brand identity first. This brand identity includes the message you want to communicate and the mood your audience wants to feel. The spectrum of brand personality can help you determine the message and mood of your brand.
Explore Color Psychology & Meanings More
How you associate colors with certain businesses, like the previous point mentioned, comes from the understanding of color meanings. This understanding can be learned from color psychology, a study of how colors affect behavior and perception. When you already know the meaning of each color and your brand identity is ready, it is one step closer to getting the right brand colors.
Read more about Color Psycology
Get Inspired
Competitors are the real inspiration. They are not only your business rivals but can also be a source of learning in many ways, such as choosing colors for your brand. When most of your competitors use blue, red, or green on their brand, it is better to follow their steps. The more brands with the same business field use the same color, the easier it will be to form concepts and associations in the minds of consumers.
Nature can be another good inspiration to have unique brand colors. When you pay close attention to your surroundings, you will find many surprising color combinations. Then, you can also experiment with colors that suit your brand’s image and values. Lastly, using a brand color generator is the simplest way to get a perfect picture of your brand’s look and appearance. There are many generator applications you can try to find the one.
Pick Your Brand Colors
Basically, there are three colors in your brand colors. You must have your base or primary colors, secondary or accent colors, and neutral colors. As the core of your brand, the primary color should represent your best trait and, at the same time, can appeal to your target. Just like many food businesses use red as the primary color or finance businesses use blue. The remaining colors can be set to match and confirm the whole image.
For secondary colors, you can follow the color scheme formulas divided into four common brand color schemes.
- Monochromatic Color Scheme. Using this color scheme means choosing the same color as your primary with different shades, tints, or hues. It is a good choice to emphasize one personality trait you want to focus on and create a minimalist brand logo.
- Analogous Color Scheme. This color scheme is a safe choice. This scheme contains close color variants to your primary color, like a primary warm color combined with other warm colors or a primary cool color combined with other cool colors. Even so, this combination will not be enough to draw attention or make your brand stands out more.
- Complementary Color Scheme. When those two closed each other to the primary color, the complementary color scheme is the opposite of your primary. This scheme can bring out the best look in each other. Since it is the most popular scheme, you should be careful when you use it. Do not let you accidentally copycat others!
- Triadic Color Scheme. Among four color schemes, triadic is as safe as the analogous color scheme. It draws an equal part of three primary colors, so it offers more stimulating colors like complimentary. The challenge in using this color scheme is to make those three coincide with your brand identity.
The last color to include in your brand is your neutral color. It is mostly used as your background and appears on various platforms or assets. Its purpose is to avoid attention and make your brand colors stand out. White is the most common neutral color, followed by beige, grey, and black. But remember, when you choose black as your neutral color, don’t let it overpower your main colors.
Make Brand Color Guidelines to Help Your Team Apply the Right Brand Colors
When you have found the right brand colors, it is an achievement and the first step to introducing the brand to the public eye and reaching more people. It will be better if you create brand color guidelines to help your team to keep consistency. Without consistency, it will be harder to get your brand recognized by your target market.