Branding Colors

BRANDING COLORS:
EVERYTHING YOU
NEED TO CHOOSE
YOUR BRAND’S
COLOR PALETTE
source: https://99designs.com/blog/tips/branding-colors/
Chase. Citibank. Barclay’s. Bank of America. All banks. All use blue
for one of their dominant branding colors. Even other financial
institutions like Prudential and Merrill Lynch use blue. Obviously
it’s more than a coincidence that these money-related companies all
chose blue for their brand identity. So what do they all know that you
don’t?
Why branding colors matter?
◦ Emotions are powerful and (whether we
like it or not) drive our decision making. As
a brand, you want to cultivate a strong
emotional connection with your customers.
The problem is you can’t tell your
company’s entire life story in a logo or
storefront—but branding colors provide a
shortcut straight to your clientele’s hearts.
“Colors, like features, follow the changes of the

emotions.” -Pablo Picasso
Application of branding colors
◦ According to neuroscientist Antonio
Damasio, how consumers feel about a
brand has more pull than what
they think about a brand. Pair that with
the fact that we know certain colors
evoke certain emotions and voila: your
brand colors have the ability to impact
your sales or performance even more
than the products you offer.
Application of branding colors
◦ Just for the sake of organization, here are the most common areas you’ll be using your branding colors:
◦ logo
◦ website
◦ storefront
◦ in-store design
◦ staff uniforms
◦ advertisements
How to determine your brand identity?
Choosing your branding colors is easy if you know

what you’re trying to communicate. One of the
earliest steps in building a brand is determining your
brand personality. Essentially, you want to think of
your company like a person: who are they? What’s
important to them?
What do different branding colors mean?
◦ Red — Red stands for passion, excitement and anger. It can signify importance and command attention.
◦ Orange — Orange stands for playfulness, vitality and friendliness. It is invigorating and evokes energy.
◦ Yellow — Yellow evokes happiness, youth and optimism, but can also seem attention-grabbing or affordable.
◦ Green — Green evokes stability, prosperity, growth and a connection to nature.
◦ Light Blue — A light shade of blue exudes tranquility, trust, openness. It can also signify innocence.
◦ Dark Blue — Dark blue stands for professionalism, security and formality. It is mature and trustworthy.
◦ Purple — Purple can signify royalty, creativity and luxury.
◦ Pink — Pink stands for femininity, youth and innocence. It ranges from modern to luxurious.
◦ Brown — Brown creates a rugged, earthy, old-fashioned look or mood.
◦ White — White evokes cleanliness, virtue, health or simplicity. It can range from affordable to high-end.
◦ Gray — Gray stands for neutrality. It can look subdued, classic, serious, mysterious or mature.
◦ Black — Black evokes a powerful, sophisticated, edgy, luxurious and modern feeling.
Formula for building a brand color scheme
◦ 1. Plan on choosing 3 colors

◦ Your base, accent and a neutral. Brand color schemes can have between 1-4
colors depending on the type (see below), but even monochrome schemes
will require some variation in hues for different purposes.
◦ 2. Choose your base
◦ Of all your brand’s personality traits, which one is most important? Your
base color should reflect not only your brand personality’s most dominant
trait, but also appeal to the target audience you’re trying to reach. You’ll
choose the remaining colors based on how well they match with this one.
◦ 3. Choose your accent
◦ Your accent will be the color you use the most after your base color. This is a bit trickier than
choosing your base color because their are more restrictions: aside from matching a brand personality
trait, your accent color must also pair visually with your base color, not to mention appease your
audience.
◦ 4. Choosing your neutral
◦ Your neutral color will most likely be a background color, something chosen to avoid attention.
Typically these are different hues of gray, but beige, whites and off-whites work, too. Black is also an
option, but be careful; it tends to dominate any color scheme it’s a part of.
◦ Classic Coors is an affordable bear that appeals to a more mature, masculine customer. They use a dark blue to indicate
maturity, and a golden brown that is between rugged, masculine brown and affordable yellow.
Typically, brands use one of these common
brand color schemes:
◦ When choosing branding
colors, the color wheel is
one of your greatest aids.
The locations of colors to
one another on the wheel.
Monochromatic
◦ When you have one personality trait
that you want to focus in on, a
monochrome scheme will emphasis the
meaning of that one brand color. While
great for minimalist brands, the
challenge here is differentiating the
hues enough that your sight doesn’t
become visually stunted.
Analogous
◦ Colors next to each other on the color wheel have
harmonious relations, since adjacent colors usually
have similar emotional connotations. Analogous
schemes are safe bets, but as such not the best for
standing out or drawing attention.
Complementary
◦ Color complements — or opposites — are colors
directly across from one another on the color wheels.
Because they’re opposites, they bring out the best in
each other when paired; you see complementary colors a
lot in sports teams. Complementary colors are great for
dynamic, stimulating visuals, but be careful of
copycatting another brand since they’re so popular.
Triadic
◦ A stable branding color scheme, triadic colors
draw in equal parts for three different sections
of the color wheel. Triadic schemes are stable
like analogous themes, but offer a more
stimulating variety like complementary
schemes. The hardest part is getting the three
colors to coincide with the traits of your brand
identity.

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Branding Colors

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BRANDING COLORS:

“Colors, like features, follow the changes of the

Choosing your branding colors is easy if you know

◦ 1. Plan on choosing 3 colors

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