Let’s take a closer look into color psychology and why it’s important for your brand. Color has a way of provoking emotions and feelings for you and your business. It is important to think deeply about how you want to speak to your audience using color.
“Colour psychology will provide the insights, guidance, and structure to efficiently create a coherent design.”— From Fiona Humberstone’s book ‘How to Style Your Brand‘.
Before brainstorming colors, I help determine a client’s vision, audience, and tone. This establishes a strong foundation to build out the brand design. Once these elements of the brand strategy are finalized, I work through color psychology. Color is a powerful tool to form connections with the feelings they create. When selecting colors, think of your audience. Above all, remind yourself what matters to them, what they are looking for, and what draws them to you.
Color Psychology – A Basic Color-by-Color Breakdown
Green evokes feelings of abundance, balance, harmony, and growth.
Blue is calm, trustworthy focused, and communicative.
Purple promotes feelings of elegance, truthfulness, ambition, and vision.
Yellow is friendly, confident, optimistic, and enlightened.
Orange promotes feelings of creativity, passion, security, and positivity.
Pink is compassionate, romantic, nurturing, and kind.
Red is strong, motivated, courageous, and assertive.
Brown is grounded, warm, honest, and organic.
White evokes pure, clear, sophisticated, clear feelings.
Black is luxurious, glamorous, dynamic, and powerful.
How to use color psychology to create your brand’s color palette
Now that we’ve discussed a range of colors and their personalities, you can build your color palette. Start by jotting down the colors you feel most resonate with your audience. Because color provokes feelings, it is easy to become emotionally attached to specific colors. So, if you find yourself selecting your personal favorite colors, remind yourself of your audience.
When choosing brand colors, it is important to consider hue and saturation. The richness of color is important to factor in. For example, if you aim to portray a grounded, honest, organic feeling; you don’t have to select a chocolate brown. You can choose a more neutral, subtle beige or tan. Or maybe you wish to exemplify creativity, positivity, and passion but have never felt strongly attached to orange. Select a soft coral rather than a bright orange.
Above all, put yourself in your audience’s position to most successfully build your brand color palette. Keep an open mind and you’ll be surprised how color psychology can help build an incredible color story!
