Finding Your Brand Colours
First, let me preface by saying that I strongly believe in working with talented designers who align with you, to create unique brand assets to convey your brands image and story.
However, there are times we find ourselves in need of a stop gap…
you could be starting out in your business, and with limited capital need to create a profile the encompasses your vision before you can invest in a designer
it could be that you’re reinventing your business and your brand assets no longer fit
or maybe you’re in the concept stage and need an interim solution
Research shows that within 90 seconds of seeing a product or business, a person will decide if they like you or they don’t. When it comes to your brand colours - between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on colour alone.
So let’s find you those colours!
Create a moodboard
One of my favourite places to find inspiration is Pinterest, and I often use it to create boards to develop brand ideas and identities, styling and design inspiration, and to find new tools or resources. Here are my steps:
Create a new Pinterest board titled your business / project and label it Develop.
I’ll often keep these boards secret so it becomes a truly personal journey.
Try to visualise what your brand were to look like if it was featured in a magazine or movie. Go all out visual.
Then, dive deep into your searches to find images that represent this visual idea - interiors, architecture, travel, fashion, whatever speaks to you.
Find the images that align with the idea in your head.
Once you have a collection of 5 - 10 images….stop. Put down your computer, tablet or phone. Come back later and reflect on these.
Look for similarities - delete any that don’t fit with the majority.
Now turn your search to colour palettes within Pinterest. Save the ones that align with the inspirational images you’ve saved.
Image - Amavi Studio
Defining your Colours
The tools you need
Whether one of your inspirational images or a colour palette you’ve found that speaks to you more (it could be a combination to two colour palettes) you need to extract the colour codes so you can use these in your website, photoshop, social media, email marketing and any print you may do.
Using the Color Picker website upload your image and your colours will automatically be defined, ready for you to you copy the html / hex code (#). It’s important to note that all of the colours featured in the image will populate, but for your brand colours you don’t need more than 6, and you need a combination of light, medium and dark colours.
Now create a file to store along with your Logo. Name the colours and add their hex code next to them so it’s easy to copy and paste whenever you need them.