Psychology of Color
So much has been written about the psychology of color: how colors affect our moods, which colors make us salivate, and which ones help us to relax. All of this research is, of course, valid, useful and readily available. So what do you need a designer for?
If color choices were as easy as consulting a research cheat-sheet, a brand’s color palette could be quickly selected, and every smart company’s brand color would be equally successful. But it’s not that simple.
Choosing colors for a brand often starts with a color swatch book or a computer monitor. Colors are paired up and combined, and they communicate different attributes and elicit different feelings. Paying careful attention to these results, the designer chooses color combinations that best represent aspects of a brand’s image. Collaboration with colleagues first, and ultimately the client, assures that the attributes associated with the colors are appropriate and powerful.
In the end, a brand’s colors, applied to the logo and marketing materials, reflect the personality of the organization. If you think of the logo as a person that greets you, the colors are the clothes it wears. Do they set you at ease? Do they inspire you? Do they make you hungry? How do they affect your mood? And what do they say about your brand?
These are the questions that designers tackle constantly, every day. Investigating what colors work well together in different lights; exploring how different combinations communicate different moods, tones and concepts; noticing how colors on a screen look different from the way they may look on a page. Our design experience gives us the ability to answer these questions quickly and consistently. Perhaps most importantly, an expert designer can listen to your plans for the brand and translate that into colors that bring the brand to life.