Brand Colors: How to pick the right one for your business

The color combination specified in your branding guidelines is your best friend. It connotes a range of emotions that speak favorably of the brand, as a whole. Or it highlights a particularly significant claim. It can make your customers feel safe and keep your employees feeling good about being a part of a positive culture. You may want to paint the town red and make the competition turn green in envy. But unless you know what color to choose, you may end up feeling blue about your own brand. Get to know how to choose Brand Colors in this article.

For instance, blue is supposed to represent traits such as intelligence, wisdom, and loyalty. Red is associated with excitement, be it passion or danger. And yellow is widely thought of to be the happiest color of them all.

But how much does that information really help?

Intelligence isn’t a strategy. Vibrancy isn’t a pipeline project. Happiness is, well that’s just subject to existential debate. Which company wouldn’t want to be associated with such qualities anyway?

A lot of questions certainly need to be raised while selecting brand colors. But if you ask the wrong ones, the answers can only over-complicate the process.

You may need to manage feedback such as “Is it bright enough?”, “Will the senior management get it?” and “Why must we look so different from our competitors?” Take it with a pinch of salt, though. Point out something shiny to them. Distract them with card tricks or something.

To pick the right color for your brand’s identity, you must first ask yourself whether it will represent the brand’s personality. Start by focusing on who the brand is rather than what it can do.

However, figuring out the personality of a profit-making entity is probably one of the hardest and most interesting tasks. It’s a classic case of ‘easier said than done’. I have known companies that have wandered aimlessly into space, simply because they didn’t take the time to better understand who they were – as a brand.

All they seemed to care was about what they were selling and how awesome everyone was supposed to think it was.

Discover the Right Color for Your Brand

Here’s a little exercise for you to take part in, just to kick off a mission.

Imagine that your brand is a person at a cocktail party, surrounded by customers, stakeholders, and industry leaders. He already has a name. So, give him an age group to belong to. Do you have a pretty good idea how the person looks like? If you don’t, go back to the drawing board and think about current market perception and future goals.

Now, do you see?

Observe this person as he goes around. Maybe he is getting reacquainted with some and introducing himself to others. Watch him closely.

Ask yourself:

What impression is he looking to create with everyone? Is he wearing an attire that supports it?

Who does he first approach to settle down and feel the pulse of the party?

Does he have a loud and charismatic voice? Or a gentler and more sophisticated one?

How’s his hair? Gel-soaked and spiked up? Neatly-trimmed and short? Is Elvis making a comeback?

Is he offering his business card to people? Just making the phone call gesture?

What does this man expect others to think of him once the party is over?

By answering these, you will discover a set of emotional and associative characteristics to base his personality around. If you want further help in assessment, you should run it past the Five Dimensions of Brand Personality by Jennifer Aaker.

Once you decide on the attributes that can best represent your brand, send him to party again. See if he does little things differently, just to be sure that you didn’t miss out on anything.

Now, ask you ask yourself just one more question.

What are his clothing colors?

Get more such ideas and examples for your designing by checking out these Design Work