Branding. Isn’t that just the most generic word? I’m a designer that’s always exploring the world of branding with all its nooks and crevasses, so goodness knows how people outside of this industry try and understand it.

Today I’m talking through colour palettes. As part of working with my customers, this is just one element that brings their brand to life, but it’s such an important one to get right! To ensure your business looks cohesive, your colour theme should flow from your logo, through to the website, into your social media and anywhere else your brand is placed.

And if you don’t love it to your core, you’re going to get sick of it real quick.

Firstly, have your customer in mind

Yes, you’ve got to love your colour theme, it’s your brand after all. But, it isn’t just yours, without your customers, you don’t have a business.

It’s not like your house where you (and maybe your partner) have to like the colour of the walls. Your brand colours speak about your aesthetic and vibe without the need for words.

Do colours have meaning?

If you’ve ever looked into what the meanings are behind certain colours, then you’ll have seen that charts that says blue depicts trust and security, but can also mean coldness and orange portrays courage and confidence but can also highlight selfishness.

Now I’m going to say a bit controversial here, but do not centre your brand colours around those theories.

It’s important to keep in the back of your mind, but I really feel it’s much more crucial to focus on who your customer is (leading back to point number one). You wouldn’t create a baby clothing brand and make the main colour black, just as much as you wouldn’t launch a drinking water start-up with a brown logo.

Create a colour story

Leading on from my previous point, your branding doesn’t just contain one colour, it’s a colour palette. At no point does someone say, “we want a business that’s centred around health and healing, so our colour is green!”

What does green even mean?

Here are my actionable tips that' will help curate a colour palette you and your customers will love.

1. Think of 5 keywords or values that represent the core of your brand
2. Use Pinterest to find inspirational images that visually represent your keywords and add them to a board
3. Go through your board and look for the most common running theme in terms of colours, mood & tones
4. Use a tool to that can pick our colours from images, I use Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop but there’s a Google Chrome plugin called ColorZilla that does a similar thing.
5. If there’s a few styles of imagery that represent your brand you can create mini branding colour boards and share them with those you trust or loyal customers to help with your direction. Below are examples of colour boards I’ve recently been creating.
6. Follow my colour palettes Pinterest boards for more inspo

Consistency is key

Once you’ve chosen your dream colour palette that you and your customers can get obsessed with, it’s time to implement it throughout your whole online and offline presence. This ensures that anyone that encounters your brand will instantly be able to know it’s you. This can include:

• Your logo
• Website
• Social media
• Printed products: flyers, business cards, price lists etc
• A physical shop/place of work

Of course, the colour palette is one element of your overall brand - if you head over to my service packages you’ll be able to see what else a branding pack includes.