Color Schemes for Your Business Brand Design

Published: June 10, 2021

Author
Mariah Raner

Categories:

Your brand logo sets the tone for your entire business as well as speaks to your business brand design. It’s often the first and last thing your customer sees, and it leaves an impression. There’s a lot of details to take into consideration from the type of text you use to the graphics. Color is one of the most important aspects of good branding, however.

Choosing the right colors that will both stand out while being memorable will attract customers who have never heard of your business, and be a visual reminder to your most loyal clients that it’s time to see what’s new. There’s more to your brand logo than just picking out pretty colors, however, and it’s all based on science.

Colors can bring out emotions

It’s no secret that colors are used to draw people in. Just as colorful flowers catch the attention of honey bees and hummingbirds, the right color schemes will do the same for customers. On the flip side, the wrong color schemes can push them away. You need to think carefully about the message you’re trying to send, as colors have a way of bringing out feelings.

According to Grand Canyon University, “Color psychology is based on the association that our brains make with certain colors. Understanding this association allows designers to match the right colors to the right products. When you look at products within a certain industry, you will see many of the same colors being used over and over again. This is no coincidence. Those colors connect the right audience with the right brand based on consumer expectations.”

The PNAS explained it a little further by stating, “Color preference is an important aspect of visual experience that influences a wide spectrum of human behaviors: buying cars, choosing clothes, decorating homes, and designing websites, to name but a few.”

You can use this to your advantage by carefully picking out the colors that emit the response you’re looking for. To do this, however, you’ll need to figure out what your brand personality is.

Finding your brand personality

Your customers should come to trust your brand. To do this, they need to know about your brand personality. Are you going for youthful, driven, and playful? Or is your business model more mature, reliable, and luxurious? 

Some of the more common brand personalities range from:

  • Playful to serious
  • Youthful to mature
  • Feminine to masculine
  • Modern to classic
  • Luxurious to affordable
  • Loud to subdued

If you’re selling perfumes for women who typically spend $400 on a bottle, then you’ll want a more mature, luxurious, feminine personality. On the other hand, if your target audience is teens or early twenties, then your personality will be youthful, playful, and affordable.

Your color scheme will go a long way towards portraying this. It will be included in your marketing videos, logo, storefront, in-store design, advertisements, website, and staff uniforms.

How many colors will you need?

It’s recommended that you choose three colors. This will help give your brand more definition and make it more recognizable. 

With that being said, your three colors should be a base, an accent, and a neutral. This isn’t absolute. If you want to go with one color, it will make your product and brand design stand out from the competition. Two colors are also very memorable, as proven by Coke. The red and white can be spotted from across the room, and no one confuses a Coke with a Pepsi or Mountain Dew.

Base color

The base color is easily the most important and will be included no matter how many colors you choose. It’s the most predominant color and will set the tone for the rest of your colors.

Accent color

The accent color is what makes the base color pop and stand out more. It should bring attention to the base, not detract from it. It’s also the color you will use the most after the base.

Neutral color

This color will be the background. It’s there to make your base and accent colors shine. It can also be used to direct the eyes to more prominent features of your logo, such as the company name. This shade will usually be gray, beige, whites, and off-whites.

Choosing your color scheme

This is either the part everyone loves or the part they hate. Picking your colors is something you don’t have to do often, however, unless you decide to rebrand.

When choosing colors, you’ll need to go back to your brand personality. This will help you pick out the perfect color scheme. 

The color you choose should be based on the emotions you’re trying to convey. Each color has its personality and combining them will give you different results. Discover the breakdown of what each color means for your brand identity here.

Make your business brand design memorable

The best color schemes in the world are useless if it looks like everything else already on the market. That’s why making your logo and business brand design unique is so crucial.

Let BrandCraft help. Our professionals are invested in making sure you succeed. Schedule a marketing strategy session with us for more information on how we can jump-start your company.

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