In psychology, colour is often associated with a persons’ emotions- which makes them a powerful marketing tool and something you will want to consider carefully when you are having a design produced.
Businesses that require regular graphics creation for their marketing activities have a few options. Hire an in-house designer, use freelancers on an ad hoc basis or enter into a retainer agreement with a local graphic designer.
It’s common knowledge that some colours work together, and some don’t. Likewise, some can enhance your logo or design, and others can distract from it. So how do you go about choosing a colour palette that will help your business rather than hinder it?
Thankfully, you don’t have to spend hours pouring over differing colour pairings, because there are some logical rules for what colours work together in a colour palette.
Analogous colours
Creating an analogous palette involves pairing your main colour with the colours that sit beside it on the colour wheel. For example, choosing red as the main colour, and orange and purple as the secondary colours. You can also choose two more colours to add to the swatch if you want a five-colour scheme. Using analogous colours is an easy way to blend together colours in your graphic design.
Complementary colours
This colour palette is based on using colours that sit opposite each other on the colour wheel. This provides you with the most contrast possible, so be careful how you use this method. Complementary colours work best when you choose one as your main colour and the other as accents. Having a high contrast is a great way to highlight certain elements of a design- and is often used for buttons on a website design you want users to click!
Triadic colours
You can probably guess what this is. Rather than taking colours from either side or opposite each other, the triadic method uses colours from equidistant points on the colour wheel (like yellow, red, and blue). This method creates a more diverse palette but can take a little more experimentation because it involves a larger number of colours that oppose each other.
Monochromatic
Used less frequently, the monochromatic method mixes different shades and depths of a single colour. These are often the simplest colour schemes to create, as they’re all taken from the same colour. Warning; monochromatic palettes can be boring if done poorly!
Other considerations
When choosing a colour palette for your design or brand, you have to consider a number of factors. How do the colours sit in your industry? How will the colours appear in your marketing material? Is this colour going to be effective?
You might also want to consider where your designs are going to be seen the most. A good example of this was when we approached the logo and branding design for Northampton-based Origin Finance– we knew this company would be using LinkedIn heavily and wanted a colour that would work well in LinkedIn’s, largely blue, environment.
Using the complimentary colour method, we created an orange-led colour palette that stood out incredibly, but also worked well to support the brand itself.
Below are some examples of the graphics we created for Origin:
