Each colour has different meanings that will be important for me to consider when choosing colours for my project. For example:
Yellow - Optimism
Orange - Friendly
Red - Excitement
Purple - Creative
Blue - Trust
Green - Peaceful
I think it’s interesting how each of these colours has stereotypical uses in branding depending on the company, but I’m very interested in how colours can be used in unconventional ways to try and display something different by a brand, which would help its recognisability and differentiability.
I had touched on this when looking at colour last semester but wanted to revisit it from a branding perspective now. Colours have different meanings depending on the country or culture it is in, for example in Western culture black is associated with death, however, in Hindu culture White is associated with death. This means that to have a brand that is perceived the same way visually around the world you have to consider the meaning of colours in various cultures. I find this really interesting as the idea of a colour having a completely different meaning somewhere is a pretty strange concept which is hard to wrap your head around. The cultural colour wheel seen below is a great resource for checking what colours mean in each culture and is something that will be really helpful for me going forward.
A big issue to consider when picking colours is accessibility. Due to the number of visual impairments in the world, it’s incredibly important to have your colour palette be easily viewed by anyone no matter their level of sight. There are two main accessibility factors to consider when choosing colours; contrast, and colour blindness. Making sure your colours have a strong enough contrast that they will be easily distinguishable is very important, especially with typography and will affect all your users. Colour Blindness is a visual impairment which some people have meaning they view colours differently. It’s important to consider this as using a palette of similar colours can lead to major accessibility issues as the palette could be illegible when viewed by someone with colour blindness. This was interesting to me as it really makes you consider more than just the visual aesthetic of colours. This will be useful for me to keep in mind as considering this early on in the colour-picking stage will help me to find a balance between visually pleasing colours and colours which will be accessible to all.
Brand Guidelines are documents which hold all the rules about how to visually represent a particular brand. Having brand guidelines helps to make a consistent brand throughout all places and is extremely important in building a recognisable and successful brand. Brand Guidelines should be as thorough as possible to avoid people using your brand in ways you don’t want it used. To ensure this, the following should be included: