Color in Visual Identities

Color in use:

Consider the particular applications for your brand - where the brand will appear

Think about accessibility - contrasting colours matters to ensure accessibility for everyone

Colour systems - think about wayfinding and how different traffic signs have different colours, or how different countries use different colours for the same purposes, as well as product lines such as below’s an example:

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Make your layout restraint by starting with black and white first, then add your colours.

How to be intentional:

Have good reasoning behind the use of your colours - write all the keywords that you want to associate your colours with

Colour psychology - think about the overall feel you want to convey, be aware of colour psychology but don’t rely on someone’s definition - make all the elements work together including colours

Association - when you think of colours what do you associate those colours with? However, every association is contextual depending on the countries, and the context.

PRO tip: watch out for your competitors

Color palette:

Start with a dominant colour - place a black text on top of it to see how that’d feel

Once you find that, add additional colours:

Play around with the different colour pairing styles such as:

monochromatic - different shades of your dominant colour

complimentary - the opposite colour of your dominant colour

Feel free to adjust the brightness and contrast as you’d like until you find the right vibe for your brand

Play around with the colour harmony tool:

https://color.adobe.com/⁠

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Once you find the colours, name the individual colour so that it’s easier to reference

Colour mode & references: RGB is the format for digital and screen, whereas CMYK format is used for print.

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TBA Resources:

Colour psychology

Colour mode & references

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