Great marketers have long understood that color is extremely powerful. It influences our mood, affects our behavior and evokes feelings quicker than any other aspect of an image. This makes choosing the right color palette for your logo a crucial part of creating a powerful brand.
Today, I want to share with you 5 tips for choosing the right colors for your brand.
Define Your Brand
Before thinking about what color your logo should be, you need to establish what your brand is about and what values your logo should communicate to potential customers. Markets are more competitive and cluttered than ever before, you need to ensure that your message is communicated concisely.
Take some time to think about your company and list 5 emotions that your logo should evoke in your customers. This will help you determine what colors evoke the emotions that match your brand values.
Analyze your competitors
Analyzing your competitors can be a helpful way to gain inspiration. It can spark ideas and give you an idea of what speaks to you. Seeing how different brands in your industry are perceived can also give you an idea of what works, and more importantly, what doesn’t work. Fortune 500 companies have spent billions of dollars on redesigning their brands in an effort to change their public perception. Even for a small business, rebranding can be a costly exercise, so I would suggest reading about companies in your industry to avoid any obvious mishaps.
Review the colors
Once you know exactly what message you want to communicate, learn about the meaning behind each color. Below is a break-down of the most popular colors.
- Red evokes excitement, youthfulness, and boldness
- Orange evokes friendliness, cheerfulness, and confidence
- Yellow optimism, clarity, and warmth
- Green evokes peace, growth, and health
- Blue evokes trust, dependability, and strength
- Purple evokes creativity, imagination, and prudence
- Gray evokes balance, neutrality, and calmness
You can use one of these colors as a foundation and explore palette variations using a color palette generator. Keep in mind that there are many shades to each color and every shade can have a very different effect.
Play around
Designing a logo and choosing brand colors should not be a rushed process. It takes creativity and time. Thanks to automated logo creation tools it is easy to play around with different color palettes and designs. Take your time in trying different shades within a palette and take it for a test drive. I like to set up social media profiles with the new logo and brand colors to see how the brand looks in action.
Test your logo
Once you have made your selection, it is a worthy exercise to test the new logo. How do you do that? You can either ask friends and family or you can go ask for feedback online from design forums such as Dribbble. Their community of designers will be happy to provide feedback and share their perception of your logo colors and overall image.
Based on this feedback, you can make the final decision on whether you want to move forward with your choice or go back to the drawing board.
Happy branding and good luck!
My name is Scott Smith, I love writing about design, entrepreneurship, and tech. When I am not on my MacBook you can find me on one of the many hiking trails in New Hampshire.
