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What Colors Are Your Brand?
One of the most important components of developing the visual expression of a brand is the development of a brand color palette. Well-considered and savvy color palettes can communicate tonal, value, and atmospheric brand attributes in a nanosecond.
If you've never seen what a color palette looks like, The Roan Group's color palette is here as an example. You'll notice both individual colors and four-color combinations (quads) presented.
Because colors have what are called “associative values,� a smart palette can even signal category. For example, there are an array of factor studies that demonstrate that certain colors signal “food� as opposed to “medicine.� Color matters.
Color palette development can also be one of the most problematic and frustrating stages of brand development for brand strategists, architects, graphic designers, interior designers, display designers, etc. That’s because color — and love of color — is subjective. Everyone has opinions about color and what colors mean and imply.
Because people make color choices every day, from how they combine the clothes and accessories they wear to what colors they paint their kitchen, many people assume — because they have experience, sensibilities, and preferences — that they have expertise. There’s a big difference between choosing the right tie or scarf to go with a suit, and developing a robust brand color strategy.
Sometimes, we have to set our personal tastes aside. I know this from personal experience. When Senior Designer Daniel Bertalotto of Doxa developed the brand color palette for The Roan Group, he selected a light olive green (Pantone 618U) as an anchor color for our brand that would be used in combination with a dark chocolate brown (Pantone 411U). Both colors would be used against a yellowish-ivory field (Pantone 7499U). I didn’t like - nor have I ever liked — that olive green. I could have chosen another scheme; I had several other choices available. But I knew from talking with Tim and from considering our overall brand strategy that the palette was right. In short, my personal tastes were irrelevant. It has been several years since we launched our new brand strategy. Every time I give someone my business card, I receive compliments: “Wow! Nice card� or something similar.
You can imagine that we occasionally hear, “But these colors are supposed to represent me and my brand. I don’t like these colors, so how can they possibly represent me? Shouldn’t my brand colors be colors I like?� There’s no question that it’s nice if you like your brand colors, but it is far more important that your brand colors be on-strategy than representative of your personal taste. Personal tastes change with fashion and with trends. What you like today you may tire of tomorrow. We all know that colors can wear out (teal, mauve, salmon, etc.)
A brand’s color strategy has to out-maneuver color trends and signal — over time — a consistent aesthetic, frame of reference, and value set.
To be candid — perhaps brutally so — developing color strategy is very much like gathering wild mushrooms for dinner. A good selection can make a savory dish exquisite; a mistake can kill you (in brand effectiveness terms). When it comes to developing color strategy, you’d better know what you're doing or you could wind up making your brand very sick or very dead. Even if you have great color instincts — and many marketing professionals do — I believe that the smartest marketing professionals I know focus on becoming more savvy and informed clients as opposed to trying to make those choices themselves.
So, how can you become more informed and more experienced when it comes to color?
First, don’t be afraid to play with color. Experiment. The web has some wonderful toy-like tools that can teach you a lot about color if you play with them. One of my favorites is an automated color-scheme generator that you reach by going here.
All you have to do is click on the color wheel and the scheme generator will generate an variety of schemes (analogic, contrast, triad, tetrad). You can see dark and light pastel versions of the same schemes. You can also experience how some people who are visually challenged (colorblindness, deuteranopy, protonopy, etc.) experience specific color schemes. The tool is not only fun, it’s instructive. For professionals, it’s a great time-saver when you’re in the color-scheme “sketch� phase.
Second, spend some time learning to understand the color wheel and get a grasp of basic color theory. There is a simple, straightforward site here that will explain the technical terms that you will need to know in order to communicate effectively with your graphic design or brand strategy professional.
Third, do some research and reading about color trends and color psychology. The Color Association of the United States publishes information about color use and color strategy — particularly in business applications — that is not only interesting, but it’s also useful. Here’s an excerpt that speaks to color and motivation:
A 1994 study (Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 123, No. 4, pp. 394-409) by Patricia Valdez and Albert Mehrabian addresses the effects of color on emotions and motivation. From this study, it was found that hue is less important than saturation and value in eliciting a response. In other words, a color’s brightness and intensity were key in eliciting reactions. “The present studies provided highly consistent evidence regards strong and highly predictable relationship of color bright and saturation to emotional reactions. In comparison, relationships of hue to emotional reactions were surprising weak ....� According to this study then, the graphic dominance of orange and green in the current contemporary business environments lies less with their respective hue and more with their ability to achieve color clarity. As the water-based blues and floral reds emerge, brightness and vividness in these hue categories in printed graphics will be critical.
To summarize, a robust and well-thought-out color strategy is a very important part of developing an effective brand strategy. While I encourage all our clients to engage a professional graphic designer - especially a brand designer (a different and unique design specialty) - to develop the brand color strategy, I also believe that anyone can benefit from becoming a more experienced and better informed professional.
Working with color takes practice and it is a good thing to keep your chops up.
Posted on February 9, 2007 08:28 AM | Permalink
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