Have you ever seen a color so iconic to a particular brand that you would recognize the brand anywhere because of the color? For instance, anytime you see the light blue shade characteristic of the Facebook brand or the series of colors on the Google logo, you will associate these colors with those companies.
Colors are integral to the identity of any particular brand. Companies that have mastered the art of selecting colors that reflect the brand and resonate with their target audience are likely to be more memorable than those that do not. What, then, can you do to create a color palette similar to the biggest brands in the world? This article gives you the best tips when choosing colors for your brand.
- Focus On Brand Identity
Colors are integral to the brand identity of any company. The colors you select for your brand must reflect your brand identity and the aesthetic that your brand resonates with. When choosing the right colors for your brand, consider the main focus of your company and its objectives. You can consult the best color service to get insight into different colors and what they would reflect about your brand.
For instance, if your brand provides services that relate to the environment and nature, using colors that relate to nature, such as green or earthy tones, including brown, can be a good idea. Alternatively, gray, green, and blue work well for tech brands. When choosing a color scheme, consider the right messaging that the color will reflect and the brand’s identity so that your chosen colors coincide with your goals.
- Use Colors That The Audience Relates With
Choosing colors is essential in marketing your brand. Therefore, you should consider what colors your company’s target audience resonates with. This demands proper research into the cultural significance of specific colors in your target demographic. You should also consider the emotional aspects surrounding any color you select. Certain colors elicit specific emotional responses from the audience. As such, you only want to choose the colors with positive responses from your audience to maximize brand awareness and marketing.
- Evaluate Your Competitors
An excellent way to identify which colors are prevalent in your market niche is by considering the colors used by your competitors. By evaluating your competitors, you can understand the right colors that work in your market niche and replicate the same results on your side. This is not to say that you should copy the color scheme that your competitors use. Doing so may be unethical and expose you to claims of trademark infringement or passing off your company as one of your competitors.
You also want to select colors that are different from your competitors to help your brand stand out. Therefore, only use your competitors as a guide and not the final product of your color scheme.
- Accessibility Concerns
When selecting your colors, always factor in people that might have particular challenges viewing your colors. For instance, people with color blindness may have challenges viewing specific colors. You do not want to lock them out from viewing your colors and interacting with your brand. To make your colors accessible, you can pass the colors you ordinarily use through a color blindness simulator to check whether people with color blindness can view them. Afterward, you can make the requisite changes to ensure complete accessibility by all people.
- Market Research
After selecting the colors you want to use for your brand, the last step should be to conduct market research on the colors you have selected and evaluate the market’s response to those colors. One way of doing this is by subjecting the colors you have selected to a focus group encompassing people of different demographics and evaluating their responses. You can also survey your consumers to get a broader response on the colors you use. After collecting responses and analytics, you can then make the requisite changes to reflect the concerns of your consumers and the general market.
- Streamline Colors Across Devices
Before finally releasing the final color scheme to the market, evaluate how the color looks on different devices. If you intend to have your brand colors accessible from all devices, you may want to ensure that the colors you select elicit the same response regardless of the device used. You can only be sure of this by evaluating the colors on different devices and checking whether the colors match universally. This will help achieve consistent results and improve the overall user experience of all your consumers.
Wrapping Up
While colors may appear trivial to the significant things a brand does, failing to select the right colors can be prejudicial to your brand identity. Choosing the right colors requires extensive work with good brand managers and marketers. When selecting your colors, remember to consider your brand identity, audience and cultural or emotional considerations, and competitors.
Also, ensure that your colors are accessible across all devices and among different people, including those with challenges such as color blindness. Finally, always evaluate the response of your target audience to the colors through market research before releasing the final color palette.
