How to Create Your Own Brand Color Palette
When you think of one of your absolute favorite brands, what usually comes to mind first? The brand’s logo? The warm feeling you get when you interact with the brand? The amazing products they offer? Those are all key things to notice and feel when you are interacting with a brand, but I wonder if it struck you which item didn’t make the list. Notice how ‘color palette’ wasn’t at the head of the roll call? That’s because it rarely even makes the top three, and there’s a reason for that. Even though the color palette is one of the absolute most important components of an effective and memorable brand design, it likes to hide in plain sight. It does its best work when you aren’t even consciously noticing it.
Why is that? Let’s dig in a little bit.
Think of the color palette as the secret agent of your brand design, infiltrating your target audience’s mind and emotions. (Ooh, the drama). It’s the magician’s assistant of a brand design, helping to perform the ultimate sleight-of-hand. (“The eye is quicker than the hand”, or whatever that little catch phrase is). Colors both communicate and show so much while not drawing any extra attention to themselves – they are just there. The eye can’t help but notice them and internalize them, and that’s when they start to do their best work. If you can learn how to utilize a color palette effectively in this way, I promise you’ll be well on your way to a strong brand.
So without further ado, let’s talk about it!
Here are three in-depth reasons why a brand’s color palette is so important. I even have a free brand development tool for you to download at the end of this blog post, so keep scrolling!
Reason 01: Colors create feelings.
It’s true! Ever heard of the psychology of colors? It’s a fascinating topic and one I wish we could dive into even more. Such a nuanced and interesting subject that you can read more about here, but essentially it’s possible to make your brand’s audience feel something through the colors you decide to use for your brand. As a really basic example, tones of green usually symbolize healing & freshness, while brown shades can symbolize dependability, ruggedness, and trust. Taking color psychology into account when developing your brand is super important. Even though your audience is probably not going to realize that your brand colors are a reason why they love your brand, you want to take advantage of your palette’s secret agent skills and use them all to your advantage.
Reason 02: Colors reflect values and goals.
Think about your brand’s values and what you hope to accomplish with your brand and its design. This definitely isn’t a quick exercise, so don’t worry if this takes some time to go over! You might have to work through some pretty serious brand strategy and do some key audience research. Developing a business plan also helps with this process – after all, you need to know where you’re going before you can plan out how to get there, right? By nailing down these values and goals, and developing a strong list of brand keywords and phrases, you’ll start to see a pattern among them. This will help you match up those keywords with your goals, and with color meanings. It’s a little bit like putting a puzzle together! A palette puzzle, if you will. A pretty pedantic palette puzzle. (Okay, I’m done).
Reason 03: Colors attract people. (The right people).
In all probability, you’ve already developed your target audience. (Oh, you haven’t done that? This is a great time to download my free essential brand checklist at the bottom of this blog post – there’s a whole section on target audiences in there!). By writing out a few audience personas & bios, you will begin to see even more patterns and be able to choose a color palette according to who you are serving with your brand. A few examples: If you are running a holistic yoga studio catering to women, you’ll want to stay away from bright reds and yellows. If you are starting a restaurant with a focus on community and local ingredients, you’ll want to maybe look at including a brown tone in your brand’s color palette. See the connections?
As a brand designer, developing a color palette for a client usually comes with the process. However, sometimes a client already has an idea of the colors they want! (See my helpful post on 3 Things to Do Before Hiring a Brand Designer). This is often preferable, as I know my client has already done some really important work in researching their brand goals and needs.
A few practical notes: when I’m digging into color palette development, a good rule of thumb is keeping the range between 4-7 colors. Too many colors can be overwhelming and lead to a lack of cohesiveness when it comes to creating graphics, while too few can feel like there aren’t enough options. A happy medium is important. Additionally, there should be a selection of light and dark tones within your brand’s color palette: lighter tones should always be used for backgrounds and basic content, while the brighter/darker shades should be used for all your text, important information, and details.
In short, coming up with an effective and influential color palette may seem like the most basic part of developing a brand, but I hope I’ve convinced you of the important role it has to play! There are so many ways to appeal to your ideal audience, and the color palette for your brand has a lot of potential. Plus, it’s FUN, and that’s an equally important reason to develop it.
Want to dig deeper into developing your brand? This is for you:
Ready to invest in a new brand design? I’m here to help! Visit the services page to see all of my offerings, and fill out the contact form to get the process rolling.
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