The Power of Colour in Graphic Design
The importance of colour in design and daily experiences cannot be overstated. It skilfully captures attention, occasionally evoking emotions and communicates meaningful messages wordlessly, making it an indispensable element.
When developing a brand or designing marketing assets, utilising colour effectively will lead to greater engagement from your consumers. The following points will help you understand the importance of colour and provide insight on how to choose the right colours for your designs:
Emotion and Psychology
Colours have the ability to influence how the consumer interacts with your design and business. Certain colours can trigger certain responses, and considering most buying decisions are based on visual factors, it’s very important you are applying the most suitable colour for your designs. Warm colours like red, orange and yellow can evoke exciting, enthusiastic, cheerful or angry emotions. Cool colours like blue, green and purple can symbolise authority and growth, and can evoke calming or envious emotions. And neutral colours like black, white, grey and brown can symbolise elegance, mystery, cleanliness and professionalism, and can evoke moody, intimidating or comforting emotions. Using these emotional associations, designers can align a brands visual identity with the intended message or perception.
Marketing and Branding
Colour plays a crucial role in establishing a brands identity as it helps build physical and mental availability. Utilising the same or similar colours throughout all your designs will ensure your brand is easily recognised and associated with by your consumers. Ask yourself questions like do these colours fit into the message my brand is trying to deliver? Will they evoke the right emotions from consumers? Colours have both positive and negative associations, so understanding and applying the most effective and suitable colours to your designs is very important.
Choosing the right colours
When you apply the right colours within your designs it can effectively communicate important messages without having to use any words. And every colour sends a different message, so it’s very important you choose colours that reflect the product or message you are trying to promote. You can achieve this by thoroughly understanding your business values, personality and target audience. If you want to promote a fun, modern aesthetic, you could consider colours that are bright and high in saturation. Or if you want to promote a more serious, sophisticated aesthetic, you could consider colours that are less saturated.
Avoiding common mistakes
The most common mistake designers make is choosing colours that evoke the wrong emotions from not understanding the businesses target audience. Another mistake is using too many colours that are the same, which can affect readability of your designs. To ensure your designs are easy on the eyes and readable, you want to create contrast between the colours. You can do this by making adjustments to a colour’s lightness, darkness or saturation. You also don’t want to make the mistake of using too many colours in one design, as it can affect the designs appeal and balance. Choosing neutral colours can help increase balance throughout your designs as well as make the colours that you do use really stand out.
It is vital you become aware of how to use colour since it can make or break your designs. Through practice and creativity, you can create designs that effectively influence your consumers. And lucky for you Notable Imprint are experts when it comes to colour and choosing the right ones for you. If you want to learn more about colour, or have a design project in mind, send us a message today!
