Choosing Your Color Palette
Branding is all about putting yourself out there online and making your work and products recognizable to others. A large part of branding is choosing your color palette, which is something many of our clients struggle with.
Not everyone opts to use a web designer/developer to help them build their website, where creating a striking, engaging color palette is included in the service. For those who opt to create a website DIY-style, here are some pointers to help you get started!
WHAT FEELING DO YOU WANT TO CONVEY?
Color theory has been around for ages, and when it comes to your website, it’s important to know what message you’ll be sending, depending on the colors you choose. The first step in this matter is always to figure out what feelings you want to convey to your audience. Is it calm? Energetic? Tranquil? Alive? These are the types of questions you want to ask yourself. Once you know this, you’ll be able to better come up with the right palette for your site.
After you’ve created your color palette, it’s time to learn how to use it.
WHO IS YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE?
Even though there’s a huge push to stop colors from being “gender-specific,” the majority of the population will see a color and associate it with a specific gender. It’s easy to make yourself go crazy by agonizing about accent colors and how they may be perceived. As it stands, here are some simple truths when it comes to colors: men usually gravitate towards strong and vibrant colors; women may gravitate more towards softer colors, like pastels; kids can be more drawn to brighter colors, like yellows, greens, and oranges.
WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, USE A FREE TOOL
If you’re struggling to create your own color palette, and need some guidance, a free tool can help speed things up. Canva is an amazing tool that not only helps you create graphics that you can use on a blog, social media, or website, but help aid in color theory. How is this possible?
Read on for step-by-step guide:
Find a photo you love: this can be one you’ve used for a blog post, or the main image of your site, or even something you liked on Instagram. At the very least, it needs to represent what you and your brand are all about.
Upload your chosen photo to the Canva Color Palette Generator: After this, simply click on “upload an image,” select your photo, and a color palette will automatically be generated with the best colors from that image. You’ll get 5 colors with the names and hex values (ex: #ffffff).
Set your brand colors: Once the color palette has been created, Canva will even give you a link to their main site where you can start creating your own graphics and designs using your shiny new palette! Oh, and the best part? It’s FREE!
ONE MORE QUICK TIP
After you have a color palette, whether you created it yourself, or with a tool like that provided from Canva, it’s time to learn how to use it. Whenever you need to change the colors of your website or blog, you’ll know what colors to use for your brand. Also, keeping your branding consistent is of the upmost importance when building an audience and following. We recommend using your color palette for your social media, logo variations, and any graphics you may create. Follow all that and you’ll be good to go!
Think this might be too much for you to want to handle? We’re always here to help!
Whether you’re starting from scratch or are going through a rebranding, we have your back. We don’t recommend changing your brand too often, but when it’s time, or if your current brand doesn’t feel like “you,” Design the Conversation will always be here to help in any way we can.
