How to Pick Your Brand Colors
Let’s chat brand colors. These play a huge role into how people perceive your brand. It’s important to gear these color schemes towards your target demographic – specifically in the way you people to feel when seeing them.
At the end of the day your brand is not any specific element, but how you make people FEEL. So, your colors should come back the the emotions you want to evoke. A nutritionist specializing in people recovering from eating disorders will have a very different color palette than a personal trainer trying to speak to men interested in iron man races and a keto diet.
So how do you then pick colors based on these emotions that will resonate with your market?
In the video above, I run through one of my favorite tools to use for this exact task: coolors.
One way I start to drill down on brand colors is by searching for specific imagery related to these emotions. So, for example if you are a nutritionist and you want your brand to make people feel inspired, welcome, safe and calm, search for imagery that makes you feel that way.
Head over to Unsplash to start and search “calming”. From there, find an image that fits this feeling. Then download it and re-upload to coolors. From here it will auto-select a pallet for you. This is where you can start playing around.
Keep in mind the uses for your colors. Here is a typical breakdown:
2 primary brand colors for your logo, headers and other elements. Remember you are going to be using these for text, so much sure they are dark enough to always be legible.
2 brand hues. Colors that should show up in imagery, accent pieces and backgrounds.
1 darker paragraph font color. Keep this more neutral.
Now with that, play with the colors in the image to find those 5 you think fit the emotions you want your brand to convey. If you can’t get all of the colors here, we can always jump into the editor and replace one or two. After we play with finalizing these colors, we have our first option for a color scheme.
Something to note, you might want to try this process on a couple of images and then play with these colors in your branding materials before selecting what you will use moving forward.I will usually play with about three different color scheme options and mix and match them while creating the branding elements before finalizing the final 5 I want to move forward with.
If you are planning on doing any print materials, you’ll want to make sure your primary colors that will be printed have a Pantone equivalent for consistency in print. Here’s where to go to find your Pantone match for your color schemes: https://www.pantone.com/color-finder
Feel free to reach out with any questions that come up around brand colors! I know it can seem like there are so many options, but hopefully this method will help you narrow it down and choose effective colors for your brand!