Branding Archives | Clouse Designs | Web & Graphic Design

6 Essential Elements of Brand Identity

From the yellow helmet of a construction worker to a bride’s pristine gown, colors are quick to convey important information. Their strong and immediate impact make color palettes a crucial component of any business’s branding efforts.

The color scheme you’ll assemble for your brand will play a key role across your various marketing assets – from the way you create a logo, to the design of your website, and much more. Employing brand colors consistently and across all platforms can result in a unified look-and-feel to your company, making them memorable and recognizable.

To help your business stand out with the right brand colors, this complete guide covers everything from what brand colors are all about, to a step-by-step process for choosing your own. We’ve also selected and analyzed 10 examples of successful brand colors for your inspiration:

How to choose your brand colors

Establish your brand identity
Explore color meanings
Search for inspiration
Pick your primary color
Choose your secondary colors
Select neutral colors
Test your brand colors

What are brand colors?

Brand colors are a palette of around five to ten colors that are used to represent a certain company. A consistent and strategic application of brand colors can increase brand awareness and recognizability.

Some of the main applications of brand colors include a company’s logo, website color scheme, social media channels, business card design, and print and digital ads. For businesses operating as brick-and-mortar, the brand colors can also apply to the design of the store, staff uniforms, product packaging, and more.

01. Establish your brand identity

The colors of your brand are a reflection of your brand identity. Your color palette should therefore align with your values and the messaging that you wish to communicate.

For this purpose, you’ll need to first define your brand identity. A recommended practice for this is to compose a list of adjectives that describe your company’s character as if you were talking about a person. Ask yourself how you’d like the brand to be perceived, and what sets it apart from the competition.

The following spectrum of brand identity traits is key for building a brand, and can help you pinpoint the core of your brand more easily:

02. Explore color meanings

Now that you’ve identified your brand personality, it’s time to choose the colors to make it shine through. In doing so, it’s worth looking into color psychology principles for common color meanings.

However, it’s also important to mention that color is not an exact science, and there’s no equation to accurately define which color means what. This is where color combinations come in, as they help in achieving a look that evokes certain feelings through their juxtaposition.

To understand this, think of the difference in the meaning of the color blue when it’s paired with gold – conjuring notions of royalty and luxury – as opposed to the same blue but paired with pink – which tends to feel much more playful.

Colors can mean different things depending on the colors they’re paired with, as well as on context and cultural connotations. There are, however, clear trends in color use based on industry. To help you choose the right color palette for your business, here’s a quick breakdown of popular brand colors by a few main industries:

Food: Many foods and restaurant businesses opt for warm colors that draw attention and evoke appetite, such as red, orange, and yellow. Other food brands choose green to promote connection with nutrition and wellbeing or blue and pink for sweets and desserts.

Health and wellness: Most health and wellness companies choose blue to signify cleanliness, trustworthiness, and responsibility. Other popular options are green, representing nature and wholesomeness, and orange, which can bring up ideas of vitality and energy.

Fashion and beauty: The fashion and beauty industries often use black for sophistication and glamour, and warm colors such as red, orange, and pink for passion, confidence, and excitement.

High-tech: Tech companies most commonly go for blue, which symbolizes trust, intelligence, and efficiency. Additional colors are orange, which is friendly and optimistic, and purple, which stands for quality and creativity.

03. Search for inspiration

As a final step before crafting your brand colors, look around for color inspiration. Browse through your competitors’ palettes, and try and understand what it is that makes them work well. Think of what you can learn from their color choices, and of ways in which you can differentiate yourself from the competition.

Other great sources of inspiration are online color palette generators, where you can find ideas for interesting color pairings and mesmerizing shades. You can also explore these logo color ideas for some inspiration.

To get your creative ideas flowing, we’ve gathered 10 successful brand colors and analyzed what it is that we like about them. Scroll down to the bottom of the article to feast your eyes on some beautiful colors.

04. Pick your primary color

Your brand’s primary color, or core color, is the one most associated with your brand. Think of the signature Tiffany’s Blue or Pinterest’s red.

For your primary color, look for a single color that best embodies your business based on color meanings. You can experiment with different shades and tints of the color you have in mind, going from lush and dark to soft and pastel, or even bright neon, in order to find the perfect look.

05. Choose your secondary colors

Once you have your primary color, pick two to four colors to go along with it. These colors will compliment your primary one and can either appear next to it or independently. A brand’s secondary colors can go in a few different directions:

Analogous color scheme: These are close variants of your primary color. This means that if your primary color is bright red, you can add other warm colors (such as orange and yellow) that belong to the same color family. Analogous color schemes are usually harmonious and pleasant in their appearance.
Monochromatic color scheme: These are different shades and tints of your primary color. For example, if your primary color is blue, your secondary colors can be light blue and dark blue. Monochromatic color schemes can strengthen and enhance your core color.
Contrasting color schemes: Contrasting colors are either complementary colors (seated across from each other on the color wheel), or a selection of colorful, equally-vibrant hues. This color scheme can help your brand colors pop and usually gives off a fun and modern feel.

The color wheel and types of color schemes

06. Select neutral colors

When crafting your brand colors, it’s easy to focus on the main colors and overlook the neutrals. However, neutral colors are important as they are the ones in charge of most of your communication (such as the color of your written text) and will appear in the background of most of your assets.

Neutral colors are usually white or black, often combined with a few shades of gray.

07. Test your brand colors

Once you’ve picked your colors, place them all together and test them in a few different combinations to make sure they complement one another and convey the message you were aiming for.

In order to make your website accessible, you should also test your palette in order to make sure that they’re clearly legible together. There are plenty of online resources and browser plugins that test color contrast for accessibility. Contrast Checker and Colour Contrast Analyser are two such tools that we recommend.

10 inspirational brand colors that work

1. Starbucks

Starbucks’ brand colors are based on a family of greens, combined with four neutral colors. Their primary color is that of the Siren logo – an iconic shade referred to as “Starbucks Green.”

The expanded color palette merges this primary green, alluding to the brand’s rich heritage, with other “fresh and inviting” hues. These include an accent green and two secondary greens.

2. Instagram

The Instagram brand colors are a gradient of blue to yellow, with a wide range of purples, pinks and oranges in between. This gradient is a reinterpretation of the brand’s rainbow from its earlier, skeuomorphic logo.

This rich color spectrum is meant to evoke feelings of “warmth and energy.” It’s also a tribute to the importance of color in the app’s filters, community uploads, and more.

3. Slack

Slack’s color palette is just as refined as it is playful. It features four primary colors – white, black, and two shades of aubergine purple. Accompanying those are blue, green, yellow, and red, serving as accent colors.

In Slack’s case, it’s the accent colors that take center stage in the logo and not its primary aubergine. Coming together to form an octothorpe, the four colors bring to mind notions of teamwork and collaboration.

04. The Guardian

The Guardian is most associated with its navy blue and bright yellow shades. Yet for a platform this rich in content, colors take part in more than brand-ability alone. They also serve as a navigational tool, by distinguishing between types of editorial content.

For example, red marks news articles, orange is for opinion pieces, and brown is for cultural topics. Each of these colors comes in a selection of variants, depending on their application: dark, main, pastel and faded. These allow for flexibility in color use.

05. Google

Google has one of those timeless logo designs that we all know by heart. And just like the design itself, the four colors of the logo (blue, red, yellow, and green) are equally synonymous with the company. Those are the brand’s primary colors, along with white which is also predominant in Google interfaces.

The secondary Google colors are darker versions of the primary ones. Those are followed by tertiary light blue and light green, and a range of grays that serve as the neutral colors in delivering information, such as in written text.

06. Lyft

Lyft is well-known for its signature pink. Yet surprisingly, the primary brand palette is composed of white as the main color, followed by black, and only then – the Lyft Pink. This ratio is meant to instill the pink with greater meaning, making it stand out in the times it is used.

The brand’s secondary palette is much more encompassing, including 40 different colors – from greens and yellows to blues and oranges. These are used to support the main brand colors, and take a back seat in crafting their brand identity.

07. Dell

The Dell brand colors are divided into three tiers. The first tier includes the company’s core colors, with the signature Dell Blue as the primary color, giving off a “vibrant and energetic” feel. The three shades of blue act as the foundation for the rest of the palette.

The second tier is made up of three accent colors (purple, berry, and orange) and five neutrals (white and a range of grays). Last is the third tier, which features three additional accent colors. An exception to this palette is black, which can be used for text or in the logo, but not as a design element.

08. Dropbox

Dropbox’s primary brand colors are blue, black, and white. But there’s much more to it, as the main focus here is the versatility of different color combinations. Dropbox boasts 18 brand colors that produce a total of 32 different pairings.

Dropbox’s rich color spectrum is intended to generate unique mixes that go together well, leading to “interesting and often unusual combinations.” This unique visual language is achieved through dynamic, mix-and-match variations, rather than through unification and standardization.

Image source: Behance

09. Mastercard

The Mastercard logo is composed of two overlapping circles, one red and the other yellow, which together produce a bright shade of orange. This same orange is also the company’s primary color, accompanied by two shades of gray (light and dark) as the background colors.

The secondary colors in the Mastercard color palette are gold, yellow and green, and the accent colors are red and teal.

Image source: Pentagram

10. Airbnb

There are five Airbnb brand colors. The most prominent among them is pink (called Rausch), which is also the color of the brand’s logo and is used repeatedly in the company’s website design. The pink is joined by a turquoise shade, an orange, and two grays – dark and light.

3 Essential Ways To Build Online Customer Trust

The rise of technology has invited a fall in consumer trust. As the regulations that govern the internet evolve and threaten the safety of online users’ personal information, more and more individuals are engaging the digital world with increasing suspicion and hesitance.

Just as we closed the door on 2017, the FCC voted to repeal the Net Neutrality laws which protected the rights of internet users and website owners. The landmark vote was met with an uproar of anger and fear, as this development paves the way for ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to auction off sensitive consumer information.

Now more than ever, internet users fear for the protection of their data.

In fact, a recent study conducted by Gigya found that “69 percent of consumers are concerned about security and privacy with Internet of Things (IoT) devices” and “68 percent don’t trust brands to handle their personal information appropriately.”

This growing climate of suspicion, coupled with the ever-increasing shift toward a digital marketplace, is particularly detrimental to small business owners. As many companies now rely on a website to grow, maintain, and manage their business, building consumer trust is key to success.

Here are three easy steps that online business owners can take to win back customer trust in 2018:

1. Get Your Website SSL Certified Already!

An SSL certificate – short for Secure Sockets Layer – designates a safe connection between a user’s server and your website. The certification adds an “s” to the “http” component of your website’s URL as well as a “secure” stamp next to your web address to indicate to users that your site is safe to access.

This probably isn’t the first time you’ve been advised to get your website SSL-certified. Yet, according to study results published in May of 2017 by SEJ, only about 25% of web traffic is protected under an SSL certificate. If your company contributes to the 75% of websites lacking this important safety designation – the time is now to change that.

Getting certified can be as easy as putting a protection plan in an online shopping cart and checking out. Some sites even claim that businesses can get an SSL certificates for free.

Not only will this attribute keep your own site safe from hackers, data miners, and cyber-criminals at large, but there are two groups who really want to see that “s” on your URL – consumers and Google.

Customers Demand SSL Reassurance.

More and more each year, the online community is becoming populated by a generation of tech-savvy individuals. Consider the bar officially raised on what consumers expect from their online experience – including your website. If your business collects private data, in particular, users won’t be quick to forfeit that information without assurance that it will land in a secure destination.

According to SEJ, “HTTPS is especially important on web pages where users provide their highly sensitive information (e.g., card information and other personal details). When visitors are interacting with your site, they expect a secure and private online experience.”

Boasting an SSL certificate is one of the easiest, yet most effective, ways to earn customer trust.

Google Rewards SSL Verification.

When operating a website, one of the keys to success is keeping Google in your corner.

One of the best ways to stay on the right side of the digital giant is by making a display of your security efforts. And when it comes to security efforts, SSL certification is essential.

Google officially announced in 2014 that websites secured through an SSL certificate are rewarded with higher search rankings. A boosted search ranking means more traffic to your website – a hefty reward in return for taking a small measure.

Not only does Google take measures to recognize SSL certification by rewarding its presence, but it also makes an effort to penalize the absence of an SSL. In accordance with Google Safe Browsing efforts, if your site is lacking the secure designation, Google will display a warning message alerting users to the potential risk of entering your site. While that safety warning is discouraging enough to consumers, it will also likely deter them from entering their personal data – especially billing and credit card information – given the risks associated with your site.

The rule of thumb for doing business online is always to do what Google says. And Google says it’s time to get SSL certified.

2. Be Transparent About Collecting User Data.

When the Google Arts and Culture app released a feature in January that matches a selfie to a famous work of art, it didn’t take long for the doppelganger game to go viral. However, the public reaction to this feature exposed an ugly underbelly to the perception of digital data collection.

Within hours of the app update, there were articles, comments, and threads popping up all over the internet positing that the feature was being used to collect images of people’s faces to store in Google’s database. While these concerns are unverified and, most likely, unfounded, they speak to the rising public concern over the collection of private information – something that business owners need to be especially conscientious about.

How can business owners respond to the growing tensions surrounding user data collection? The best route to take is one of transparency.

Consumers want honesty.

Here are the best practices for giving your customers peace of mind over the collection of their personal details:

Disclose EVERYTHING in Your Privacy Policy.

Not only is a privacy policy standard protocol for business these days, but it’s also a legal necessity. While federal, state, and local laws have long dictated the need for businesses to disclose how they gather, store, and use private consumer information, the reins are being tightened even further with the May 2018 institution of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The GDPR – though it originates in the EU – is due to affect business owners all over the world by enforcing strict regulations on how to disclose the collection of personal information.

Instead of struggling to keep up with all the changing rules which govern your privacy efforts, the best practice that business owners can adopt is simply to create a comprehensive, transparent privacy policy that clearly outlines how, when, where, and why customer information is collected.

Not only will this practice afford you legal protection, but customers will appreciate having knowledge of exactly where their personal information goes and for what purposes it will be used.

Get User Consent with a Clickwrap Banner.

When building customer trust through a privacy policy, it’s not enough just to bring user attention to that policy. To fully benefit your business in both legal compliance and customer relations, you should aim to get explicit consumer consent before collecting any personal information. There are two methods of advertising a privacy policy on your website – browsewrap and clickwrap. But only clickwrap will demand explicit consent be given by your users to collect their information.

While browsewrap notifies your site’s visitors to the existence of a privacy policy through a banner, it allows users to access and browse your site without acknowledging – or consenting to – your privacy practices. Yet, many companies still employ this method, unwittingly to their detriment. Not only has browsewrap begun to carry a reputation for being an underhanded method of informing consumers of data collection, but it does not meet the legal requirements of the GDPR.

Clickwrap, on the other hand, requires site visitors to click a button or tick a box acknowledging that they have read the privacy policy before continuing to access your site. This action, known as “affirmative consent” is the crux-de-gras of safety efforts when it comes to the collection of customer data.

Hosting a clickwrap agreement on your website will set you ahead of the pack in both visible security efforts and privacy regulation compliance.

3. Amplify Your Customer Service.

Consumer trust is not built in online safety alone. It’s also earned through exceptional customer service.

But this isn’t new information, right? However, according to Business Insider, “As consumers increasingly buy products online that they haven’t seen in person — leaving room for purchasing errors and buyer’s remorse — it’s now more important than ever to provide customers with positive customer service experiences.”

Stressing the financial risk that business owners take in not prioritizing customer service, Business Insider goes on to say, “60% of consumers say they have not completed an intended purchase due to a poor customer service experience.”

Customer service in the digital world is especially demanding as it is now an omni-channel operation. Big businesses, in particular, are able to boast 24/7 assistance via email, phone, live chat, and even social media outlets. While many small businesses don’t have access to the resources to compete on this level, business owners should still take steps to make customer service a priority – especially online.

Update Your Information.

Keep up-to-date contact information and hours present on your website, and consider designating a social media account – like Twitter or a Facebook page – where customers can direct their questions and comments.

Post Customer Reviews.

One of the best ways to build trust is to offer your customers testimonials and reviews from others. Invespcro.com found that “88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.” However, be sure not to make the all-too-common mistake of manufacturing reviews. Customers will know, and trust in your business will be further diminished. Instead, ask satisfied patrons to review your site or offer a testimonial. Consider incentivizing users with discounts or rewards in exchange for their honest feedback.

Personalize the Customer Service Experience.

While large-scale companies have the resources to handle massive inpours of customer queries, small business owners have the opportunity to accomplish something that consumers are seeing less and less of lately – offer a personal customer service experience.

Instead of letting emails pile up without replies, reviews be posted without responses, and questions left without answers, take the time to address the individuals that take the time to reach out to your business. Listen to what they’re saying, make an effort to understand, and offer a thoughtful response.

Given the impersonal atmosphere of the cyber-world, it can make a big difference to remind your customers that on the other side of the screen is another person.

Conclusion.

If your company relies on the internet to thrive, earning the trust of wary consumers is now more important than ever. Ring in the new year with a new commitment to securing your customers’ faith in you, your website, and your business.

Category Archives: Branding