Remember when everyone started generating colour palettes from their Instagram™ feed? I do! 🙋♀️ If you’re posting ANYTHING to your feed, you’ve got a set of brand colours whether you know it or not.
It’s kind of like how you are constantly creating and manifesting with your thoughts, whether you’re aware of it or not. When it comes to building your social media presence and your brand online, wouldn’t you rather be intentional about the colours you’re choosing?
Here’s what to consider when you’re choosing the colours you’ll use to represent your brand:
1. Values Fit
Do the colours fit your brand values?
Take, for example, three fictional baby onesie brands. One brand might be traditional and classic, and choose a colour palette of baby blue and pastel yellow. That could be a fit!
Another brand may be modern and bold, and choose a colour palette of hot pink and bright navy. That could work, too!
Our third baby brand values simplicity and elegance, and chooses a colour palette of red and electric blue. That’s less likely to be a fit. 🙅♀️
Katie Struthers Brand - designed by Clear Quartz Creative
2. Ideal Client
Are you simply choosing colours because they’re trendy or because you like them, or do they represent your work, product, or ideal client?
Make sure that you’re not making a choice based on whatever the Pantone colour was last year, or what’s currently the ‘it’ colour in fashion.
Consider your brand from the perspective of your ideal client. Sometimes there’s alignment between you and them, and in that case your colour preferences are more relevant. If you and your ideal client are quite different, however, you may want to leave your own preferences out of the equation and survey your customers instead!
3. Versatility/Palette
One colour does not a brand make. You don’t want to rebrand once a year, so make sure that you have a palette of at least 3 shades so that your brand can last longer while staying versatile. Every colour palette I deliver for my clients has at least one light shade, a medium shade, and a dark shade so their brand colours make up a complete palette.
4. Photography
Now that you’ve got a new brand with a colour palette of your own, your photography will have to be created to match. Before you make a final decision on a set of colour tones, check if you already have enough props in this colour scheme or if they are easily obtained. Take a glance in your closet to see if everything matches or clashes completely. No one wants to brand everything to baby blue and dark grey to realize their only photoshoot-ready dress is bright red!
Choosing colours doesn’t have to be complicated, it only has to be intentional! If your new brand colours fit your values and your ideal client, have a versatile palette and are simple to photograph, you’ve got yourself a gem of a brand!
