How Your Company Colours Represent Your Brand’s Personality
Whether you are designing a brand for the first time or embarking on a brand refresh, you should aim to pick a colour that will represent your brand’s personality best. One that will give your customers the right impression the first time they see it. At Outsource to Us, we can run a personal
brand workshop for your company.
Colour is a constant all-encompassing characteristic of life. Our decisions and emotional responses to every item we look at, every piece of material we wear, every billboard we see down to which flyer we pick up or not, will in some way be based on colour. So what does the colour you choose say about your company? Does it really matter?
People are visual beings and emotionally connect with colour. Research reveals that people make a subconscious judgement about a brand, environment or product within 90 seconds of an initial viewing and between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on colour alone.
“Is there anything more inspiring or mood altering than colour? The relaxing feeling you get looking out where the bright blue sky meets the deep blue ocean, or the happy and energised feeling a bunch of sunflowers on a bright summers day evokes. Colour is such a powerful communication tool. I’ve never met a rainbow that didn’t make me smile.”
Alison Parks, Senior Designer at Outsource to Us
A key element of building a strong brand is colour selection. Every colour has a different feel and various associations. By choosing a colour or combination of colours for your brand identity, you will take on those associations. So when developing your logo, branding and marketing materials, whilst the content and messages are essential, don’t underestimate the power of colour. While visual appeal is an important consideration, your colour choices could be sending a specific message to the people who view your brand and it is vital to choose colours that will represent your identity effectively.
“Colour is a strong tool which effects people on both a conscious and sub conscious level. It’s use in branding plays a pivotal psychological role in connecting and driving people towards your products and services. A key example of this is the use of red for most fast-food companies, red is known to both increase appetite as well as heighten the senses.”
Ben Miller, Graphic Designer at Outsource to Us
Consider the target market or audience for your business. Consider cultural perceptions and interpretations of your branding colour palette. For example, in the Western world, white is considered the colour of purity and peace, whereas, in some parts of Asia, white is the colour of death and mourning. Ensure the colour you select will give the right message and evoke the response you are looking for in your market.
Whilst colours aren’t tied to any particular industry, be mindful that similar industries often use the same colour palettes, yellow is very popular in food, household goods and energy, whereas purple is very popular with credit and banking, health and medicine, and technologies.
A study of the world’s top 100 brands (determined by brand value) analysed each brand logos and found the following:
- 95% of the brands used only 1-2 colours in their logo.
- 41% use text only and 9% don’t have their company name in their logo at all.
- The most popular colour within this sample group is blue at 33%. 29% used red, 28% are just grey scale including just black and white and 13% use yellow.
Remember, you should aim to pick a colour that will represent your business’ personality the best. One that will give your customers the right impression the first time they come into contact with it.
So where to start? Below are some points to consider and questions to ask yourself:
- What colour do you like?
(Yes really! You will be seeing it every day so, it’s important that you can live with it.)
- What colour represents your brand’s personality?
- Can these colours be easily rendered and reproduced? For example; will it work for uniforms, websites and shop front signage?
- Will these colours date?
- What do the colours say about the characteristics of your business?
- Are they too similar to your competitors?
At the end of the day, the colour(s) you choose should take into account all the theories, discussions and colour psychology, and that it represents your company ethos and say something about your business. BUT, mostly important, you have to LOVE it because you’re going to see a lot of it. It represents you and your business.
The
graphic designers at Outsource to Us are experts in choosing just the right colour to get your message across, and will work with you to make sure you love it!
