Color is a great way to distinguish your brand and create recognition.
In fact, color increases brand recognition by up to 80%.
Think about Home Depot, Target, and T-Mobile. Did their brand colors (orange, red, and pink) automatically pop into your mind? Of course they did!
The same should be true for your brand.
This post is part of Elle & Company’s 4-week Brand Challenge. Click here to see more details, sign up, and access the free workbook.
DAY 11 ACTION STEP
Come up with a primary + secondary color palette
The colors you choose to represent your business should not only be memorable and recognizable, but they should appeal to your ideal clients and customers.
Easier said than done, though. I’ve found that many business owners struggle to choose colors because there are so many to choose from. Can you relate?
If so, I laid out the exact steps you should take when choosing your brand colors in this blog post: How to Create a Distinct Color Palette for Your Brand
Once you’ve worked through those steps, consider how the colors you chose match up with your brand keywords, mission statement, and tone.
For example, my former client, Amanda Jameson, used the words welcoming, delightful, joyful, inviting, refreshing, warm, intentional, invested, professional, and authentic to describe her brand.
The color palette we chose for Amanda’s brand blended in well with those 10 adjectives listed above.
The peachy pink lends itself well to "delightful" and "joyful." The soft blue/green is "refreshing" and "authentic." And the shades of brown are "warm" and "invested."
It’s important to use intention when you’re choosing colors and measure them up against the foundation you laid in Week 1.
Once you’ve landed on a solid color palette, use page 14 of your workbook to list out the color values of each of your brand colors to create consistency.
I’ve left space for you to fill in the hexadecimal colors for web and CMYK colors for print.
You can find these color values in the Color window in Adobe Illustrator.
To switch between the different color modes, click the Options icon in the top right corner of the window and choose which mode you want to view.
Consistency is key in branding. The more and more you use these same colors over and over, the more your audience will recognize your brand when they come into contact with it.
Tiffany’s doesn’t use all different kinds of blue; they use one shade, over and over and over.
Rounding up these color values will help you maintain consistency with your brand colors. It will also come in handy when you go to change a button color on your website or choose colors for collateral items.
When you’re done, share your color palette in the Elle & Company Facebook Group! I want to see which colors you chose for your one-of-a-kind brand.
