The Importance of Color
As designers and photographers, color is part of Onion Studio’s every day life, however, in day-to-day business, not many people consciously focus on color even though color is the first thing a consumer sees about a brand and plays a huge roll in how that brand is perceived. According to the Institute for Color Research, “research reveals people make a subconscious judgment about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone.” It is well known colors evoke different moods and convey different meanings.
So, is your brand conveying the right message?
Start with your product or service. What is it that you’re selling and how do you want the customer to feel about that product? Luxe items generally stick to monotone black, white and gray color schemes. Products aimed for children generally use bright, fun colors: orange and yellow. Natural products tend to stick with a green theme.
After picking colors that represent your business, Onion Studio advises to stick with two main colors and use two or three accent colors that compliment your brand. If you give your customers too many colors to remember, you dilute your brand color’s power. You want people to see a color and instantly associate that with your brand. What do you think about when you see red and white? Coca Cola? How about yellow and red? McDonalds, right? That’s the kind of color power you want.
Once you have your two main brand colors, you can use online color generators to help pick your accent colors. Adobe Color CC, Paletton, and Color Hunt are some good sites to look at color palettes. If you’re looking for some inspiration via photos, designspiration.net and Pinterest are both great sites.
Another great resource is… us! We are here to help create branding for you! Give us your ideas and we will work with you to create a concept to implement in all of your marketing, sales and social outlets.
Color Trends
Do your products change with emerging trends? Pantone just announced the 2019 Color of the Year: PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral. Pantone's color of the year has influenced product development and purchasing for the past 20 years. Pantone's color experts study consumer and product trends to arrive at the color selection each year.
Similarly, the Color Marketing Group forecasts color trends. If you sign up for their newsletter, you receive color alerts each month. Their “Chromazones” are small events locally and internationally that identify current color trends and use that information to help predict what colors will be trending two years out. The information collected at the Chromazones is gathered and assessed for their annual International Summit. The summit is held every November and includes workshops, speakers, and the final color forecast is revealed. It is a great experience and so beneficial to any business that has a product that evolves with trends.
Taking Our Own Advice
Recently, I was tasked with coming up with a color palette for Onion Studio. Our two dominate colors are a bright green and dark gray.
Choosing accent colors was a little tricky since we offer many different services to many different demographics. I wanted to make sure our color palette conveyed the right message to each of our clientele. Ultimately, I decided to break our palette down by our different sub-brands: Wedding & Engagement, Lifestages, and Commercial.
For Wedding & Engagement, I went with a light, muted pink. Pink conjures feelings of romance, gentleness, of being light-hearted and delicate. My whimsical and soft pink pairs nicely with our Onion green giving it a resemblance of a rose. I aptly named our pink “Bloom.”
Lifestages entails all the moments you want to capture. From newborn sessions to family reunions and everything in between. I wanted something fun, but nostalgic. Purple has both of these qualities as well as conveying creativity, which we pride ourselves on! I stuck with the muted theme of the pink so the colors would complement one another. Our newborns are deemed “Onion Sprouts” and so it seemed fitting to name this purple “Shallot."
Our commercial clients are a little bit different than our Wedding and Lifestages clients, so I wanted to find a color that complimented Bloom and Shallot, but was also it’s own identity. I went bold with this one: a saturated blue that portrays trust, confidence, reliability, loyalty and success. Blue is often times seen with brands that want to exude these qualities. The vibrant blue and our lively green play well off each other keeping this sub-brand cheerful yet professional. Staying with the nature theme of naming, I liked the name “Azure” as it’s a very strong sounding name and is often used when referring to skies and seas.
Let's Create!
If you're looking for a whole new brand or to update an existing one, let us help you on your branding path. Contact us about a consultation or an estimate. We look forward to building you a better brand!
0 Comments