Basics of Branding: Lecture 4
Color in branding
Studies have found that a brand’s colors affect more than 60% of a customer’s purchasing decision.
Understanding the psychology of color can help your brand establish trust and familiarity by evoking the right emotions.
The psychology/emotion associated with various colors:
- Red: Increases your heart rate, makes you breath faster. It is associated with energy, excitement and passion.
- Purple: It is a mysterious color. Associated with elegance and royalty. Also associated with spirituality and magic.
- Blue: Puts people at ease. Associated with trust, security and confidence.
- Green: Gives a feeling of freshness. Associated with health, peace and serenity.
- Yellow: Associated with the sun, warmth, happiness and positivity.
- Orange: Mixes the brightness and positivity of yellow with the excitement and passion of red. Evokes a adventurous feeling.
- Brown: Provides feelings of grounded simplicity. Associated with classical and trustworthy.
- Black: Classic and sophisticated. Works with luxury products and can be combined with other colors to create a stronger emotion.
- White: Simplicity, purity and cleanliness. Can also be associated with feelings of trust.
Building your brand color scheme
While there’s no hard and fast rules here, let’s talk about some guideliness that can help you in getting to a color scheme that fits your brand:
Plan to choose 3 colors: A base color, an accent color and a neutral
Choose your base color: Your base color should be representative of your brand’s strongest features. It needs to appeal most broadly to your target audience.
Choose your accent color: This will be the color used most after the base color. It needs to visually pair well with your base color. Using color scheme generators and inputting your base color will give you many possible colors to choose from for your accent color.
Choose your neutral color: The neutral color will most likely be the background color. Typically these are shades of grey, beiges or whites.
Just remember - these are not hard and concrete rules. Be open to experiment and see what color schemes fit well for your brand.