Branding Help for newbie Designer - COLOR
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- cherub
I've been working on my new wp website. (neve theme)
I have my 4 main website colors already chosen, I applied them to a mostly blank website page to see if I liked them, and I had to do some rearranging but using trial and error I came up with a scheme that I liked, that didn't look too bad.
So when you first create a brand, you choose roughly about 3-5 colors that will be your main brand colors to use not only on the website but also company stationary, emails, etc... is that generally correct?
https://www.flux-academy.com/blo….
According to the link above, when designing u choose 'three colors for your palette: a main (or primary) color, secondary color, and accent color. Then, use the 60/30/10 rule to apply these colors in your website design' (using them for your main, secondary, and accent colors respectively)
Question, my wordpress panel has a section that looks mostly similar to the pic below. It asks for your 'secondary' color and 'unclicked links' and 'clicked links' color, etc...
https://gbatemp.net/attachments/…
How do I go about applying my brand colors using the rule above?
I'm fairly certain your 60% main color is the background color, probably on every single page of your whole website.
When we get to choosing the 'secondary' (30%) color things get slightly less clear.
And where I'm really struggling is I am really confused about container (table?) color, and clicked/ unclicked links color. When I applied it to my website I noticed they can't all be one because you can't see the text because it blends with the background. So obviously it's like putting together a puzzle. Table color can't be text color. Ok got it.
Overall this is very messy. It's because I still don't understand really the terminology, or the container, row, columns system. Still learning.
Any advice for a wannabe designer?
- _niko3
might be overkill to apply the main colour as the background, you can stick to white or black as the background and use your primary and secondary colours throughout with the 60/30 rule.
If this is for a portfolio, you might want to avoid your brand colours other than in the header and footer as it will compete with your work.
- _niko3
Sites like this Rosalina example in your link above work well because the colours also play in harmony with the images.
if this is not a portfolio site and you can control the images, lay everything out all together in photoshop or XD or Figma and see what the right balance is.
By going straight into WP and assigning colours first you're setting yourself up for frustration
- "you can control the images" ohhh this is deep, once I digested what you meant.cherub
- Even though it's not presently on the wp site, the content that will ultimately be there is what I create my brand around. Right? In the case of youtube embedscherub
- ...which is mostly what my site will be with brief copy below it, the frame of the player, and the colors inside the video will be what I'll have to design forcherub
- By "frame" I mean the letterboxing around the embedded video, which is black, and there is also a tiny bit of white text and red play button.cherub
- cherub0
I thought QBN would have more to say about branding than this.
No ideas, opinions, or general thoughts on how to create a brand?I feel like I've only scratched the surface.
- Morning_star1
Firstly, congrats on approaching this in a way that should ultimately build a stronger and more consistent brand. Most projects are started from a final vision and the brand is contrived and manipulated to achieve that one goal, compromising (and weakening) its component parts.
Colour is incredibly important in many different ways. They can evoke a plethora of emotions and expectations, instil values like confidence, health, luxury, budget, male, female etc and drive home a brands presence by becoming an essential brand code.
There are a couple of things you should maybe mull over that could help guide what’s the best solution for your project:
- There’s a big difference between an identity and a brand. Identity is just what it looks and sounds like, Brand is more about what the audience experiences during an interaction with you.
- There’s a battle to be faught between the impact of the brand and the aesthetic you want to achieve. The number of colours you choose is largely unimportant. Brands like Cat, Coke, HSBC, John Deer and Dairy Milk are associated with one predominant colour, a fundamental brand code and in all those examples, just seeing the colour without any other reference can be enough to create instant brand recall in an audience. All these brands have secondary palettes but are only recognised for one
- What is the relationship with the other brand elements? What’s the logo and how much impact should it have? Do the colours help deliver the content or service or muddy the impact and confuse the audience? Do the other brand components: typefaces, icons, tone of voice, images etc come together with the colours to deliver a focussed and cohesive brand experience?
- What’s the fundamental purpose of the brand? Are you selling a physical product? Content? A service? If, as you say, there will be video content, look at brands that do it well and get inspired? Both Netflix and YouTube have incredible simple and pared back colour palettes because their content is what’s important to the audience. In both cases logos are simplified to letters and the brand colours minimised to one and black.
- Less is more. Quite simply the less brand components, including colours, the easier it will be for your audience to recognise and recall your brand amongst all the other noise out there.
Above all consider your audience and what experience you want them to have and how you make it better than everything else out there. Colour is important but only one component and a strong brand. I hope that helps a bit. Good luck and can’t wait to see the final results.
- cherub1
^ What an awesome and informative post, cheers. :)
First mistake I'm making is I'm saying brand when I really mean identity.
Brand would encompass things that I haven't even thought of yet, like how long your page takes to load, whether you support mobile, etc...
wow.
- :-) no probs.
for what it’s worth, mobile first, always. Around 95% of all web interaction is via a mobile device.Morning_star
- :-) no probs.