Choosing colours for your online branding is about more than just making your brand look nice. You can use colour theory to communicate feelings and personality, saying so much about your brand without words.
In this guide, we’ll explain the basics of colour theory, why it matters, and just how you can apply it across your online branding for a consistent, meaningful image.
Where Can You Apply Colour Theory?
Since colour theory can tell us how colours work together to influence our emotions and perceptions, it acts as a guide for designers to create compelling graphics. For brands, graphics that draw an audience in are a winning ticket to growing an audience base.
Let’s consider YouTube vloggers, for example. Once you define your brand, you can apply colour theory to your brand palette, and utilise the colour scheme across your video backgrounds, profile graphics and banner. Using tools like a YouTube banner template, you can easily improve your brand’s presence online with the principles of colour theory.
The result is a consistent branding across not just YouTube or your preferred platform but across your entire digital presence, which helps your audience navigate platforms to find you. Then, when they do land on your profile, they are met with graphics that inspire emotions and positive moods through harmonised colour palettes. But to get there, we need to start with understanding colour theory to select the right tones for your brand.
Understand the Basics of Colour Theory
So, what exactly is colour theory? Colour theory explores how colours blend together to make new colours, how different colours evoke different feelings and how some colour combinations are more appealing than others.
Kinds of Colours
You likely learnt about the colour wheel in art class as a child, but here’s a brief refresher. Primary colours are those that can’t be created by mixing together other colours – these are blue, red and yellow.
You can create secondary colours – orange, purple and green – by combining two of the primary colours. Red + yellow = orange, red + blue = purple, and yellow + blue = green.
And then there’s tertiary colours. These are created by blending a primary colour with a neighbouring secondary colour. This is how we start getting different shades of colours, like warm red-orange or deep blue-green.
The Emotional Impact of Colour
Each colour evokes a different emotion and can contribute significantly to visual storytelling. Warmer colours can evoke positive feelings of cosiness and love, but they can also remind us of anger and rage.
Cool colours can seem sad (like the phrase “feeling blue”), but they are also often associated with trustworthiness and stability. The emotional impact of colour is very intuitive – when you think of the colours used by your favourite brands, what do you feel?
Colour Schemes
A colour scheme is a combination of colours used to convey a specific mood. There are many different types of colour schemes, but three of the most common are complementary, analogous and monochromatic colour schemes.
Complementary colour schemes use colours opposite to one another on the colour wheel, proving that opposites attract.
Analogous colour schemes are those next to each other on the colour wheel.
Monochromatic colour schemes use slightly different shades and tints of the same colour to produce a consistent look.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, it’s time to figure out how you can apply these concepts across your online branding.
Define Your Brand Mood and Message
As discussed, colours make us feel things, so what emotions should your brand evoke? Brands in healthcare frequently use a monochromatic colour scheme of blues to communicate that they are dependable and hygienic.
Contrastingly, beauty brands often rely on reds and pinks to convey a sense of passion and beauty.
And on the other end of the spectrum again, eco-friendly brands demonstrate their commitment to the environment through shades of greens and browns.
To define your brand mood, create a mood board of images that align with your brand messaging, then identify common colours throughout to narrow your colour palette.
Build a Cohesive Colour Palette
No matter your chosen brand mood, it’s imperative to choose brand colours that are cohesive with your vision and with one another. Choose one or two main colours to ground your palette, then perhaps an accent colour or a neutral shade to include in your online branding.
When building your palette, keep both harmony and versatility in mind – this is when your understanding of colour schemes comes into play. Your palette should have eye-catching visual appeal yet work across the platforms you use.
Consider the Accessibility of Your Palette
A major part of choosing colours is understanding how accessible they will make your content to a diverse array of users. Accessibility is key for maintaining users’ experience and trust.
For example, contrast is crucial for readability. Test your palette on both dark and light backgrounds before locking it in. A good rule of thumb is to avoid using a font of a similar tone to the background, like a yellow font on a white background.
To ensure your content is accessible to people with colour blindness, avoid pairing greens and reds in places where contrast matters. Online tools like the WebAIM contrast checker can help you gauge how well your colour palette works.
Apply Your Palette Strategically Across Platforms
Once you’ve refined your colour palette, it’s time to bring it to life. Apply your palette everywhere – logos, social media platforms, websites, product packaging and business cards should all reflect this updated scheme.
Be intentional with how you apply your colours. Buttons and calls to action should be bright, bold, and attention-grabbing, while less critical things like website backgrounds should be more neutral.
If you’re not a graphic designer, have no fear. Use internal tools from your most-used platforms or free tools from brands like Adobe to easily apply your palette to everything from YouTube banner templates to Instagram graphics.
Maintain Consistency (But Stay Flexible!)
Of course, consistency is extremely important in branding. Stick to your palette, but also allow wiggle room for seasonal or campaign-specific variations. Save the exact RGB or HEX colour codes of your palette on a brand guide to ensure consistent application throughout your online branding. Ensure the brand guide is available to employees and collaborators so everyone is on the same page!
Key Takeaways
To recap, colour is a powerful creative tool that can bring your online branding to the next level. Firstly, keep learning more about the basics of colour theory – the colour wheel, the emotional impact of colour and different types of colour schemes. Then, define the mood and message of your brand and identify the colours that align with the feelings that these evoke. Build a cohesive colour palette with main colours, accent colours, and neutrals, keeping harmony and versatility in mind.
You want to ensure the colour palette of your online branding is accessible to people with visual impairments like colour blindness, and then apply your palette across platforms, on everything from YouTube to your business cards. Finally, maintain the consistency of your branding, but allow for some flexibility when it comes to seasons, holidays, and special campaigns.
With these tips, your online branding can go from good to great!