Not Just Pretty | Building An Effective Small Business Brand

Q&A: Changing Your Brand's Colors

QUESTION

Can you give me your opinion on changing the colours in your logo to suit different types of advertising.

What impression does it give, and will it effect long term establishment of that brand/logo.?

ANSWER

For a small business, I recommend NOT changing your company's logo colors (aside from using a color version and a black and white version where applicable). One of your logo's primary jobs is to be memorable. One of the best ways to become memorable is by being consistent with your logo and brand's appearance. You should have a set color palette that you work with because color is one of the most powerful parts of the initial impression - people often remember the colors of a brand earlier than they will remember the logo's icon or even the company name.

There is the occasional brand where changing the logo's color palette becomes a part of the brand's statement. It gives the impression of variety, wide-ranging scope, ability to change, and flexibility. This will be added to the impression that the different colors you've chosen have But, since this type of business has more variation in their look, it usually takes longer to build and establish memorability, and to train your clients to expect to see the brand in different colors.

Consistently Designing With Color

The last important consideration when designing with color is making sure that you use it consistently, across all of your designed materials.

How do you do that?

1. Decide what colors you will use in the logo design stage of the process. Use the brand definition of your company and the meaning of colors to determine the best colors for your company. 

2. Decide if you will use any secondary colors. All of your colors don't have to appear in the logo itself. In this example, I've used a lighter blue on the business card, letterhead and envelope - and that blue doesn't appear in the logo.

3. Decide where and how those secondary colors will be used. You have control over this decision - so execute on it as consistently as possible across all of your materials.

4. Before printing your materials or publishing online, put them all together in one place and really look at the color usage to make sure they're consistent. They can appear to match when they're in separate files, but then not be a good fit when they're actually all seen together.

5. When you do print, use a high-quality printer. Whether you use a home printer or have your materials professionally printed, make sure your printer is correctly calibrating for color. When printing with a professional, make sure they have up-to-date equipment and it's well-maintained. When printing at home, make sure that your ink cartridges are full and not streaking. And, that you're using the right printer settings to get the most color bang for your buck - if you use the "ink saving" mode on a nice marketing flyer, your clients will be able to tell, and that can hurt your message.

6. Run proofs to check for color. Many professional printers will give you an opportunity to run a proof to check the color of your project. It's a good idea to do so - even if you've used the printer before, because their color calibration settings could have changed. The proof might cost more, but the consistency can be worth it.

7. Use good quality, consistent paper. Colors can look different on a bright white paper or an ivory-toned paper, so it's good to use the same paper across all of your marketing materials to maintain color consistency.

8. Be a guardian of your color scheme - down to the details. Even if you're just designing a quick flyer, making an addition to your website, or creating a PowerPoint document, color will come in to play. Link colors, colors of charts or graphs, and even the color palette in your stock photography can reinforce - or clash with - your brand. Use yours consistently through the life of your business to continue to look consistent.

With that, I wrap up color week - thanks for tuning in! And I'll be answering another question next week in the blog.

How To Use Color Creatively

 

Printing ideas:

• Use colored paper. When I say color, I'm not necessarily talking about printing all of your materials in color. You can print in black and white on a colored paper and still gain significant impact. If you do this, consider getting a unique paper from a paper manufacturer or mill - instead of just using the off-the-shelf colors at the office supply store. You'll be more likely to make a distinct impression.
• Use stickers. If you can only afford black and white printing, look into getting some color-printed stickers or labels. You can even get pre-colored labels and use them on your materials in interesting ways to add punches of color.
• Go digital. Digital printing (through companies like psprint.com) is more affordable than ever - which means that you should be able to afford at least color business cards.
• On the web, color is free. I'm not saying that you should go off your brand and go wild with your palette, but even if you can't afford printing in color, you can establish a color palette on your website and on your Twitter page.

Using Color In Your Designs

• Restrict your color palette. If you narrow your color palette to 1 or 2 colors, your branded materials can look very customized. Make sure one of your colors is dark enough to be used for legible text.
• If it goes with your message, consider using the rainbow. Full-spectrum graphics are becoming more and more popular with the rise in consistency of digital printing - and the fall in cost. Don't just use the whole rainbow because you can, though - use it because your business's message is one of variety or energy. 
• Use color only in spots or in specific ways. You can really raise the impact of your materials by using just punches of color, instead of full floods of color across the whole page. Sometimes, less is more. 
• Choose interesting spot colors. If you're printing on a press using Pantone colors (instead of digitally), you can consider metallic or neon colors. They won't print right on a digital press, but the extra investment may be well worth it.

Why Use Color In Your Small Business's Brand?

There are many reasons why you should use color in your small business's brand. According to statistics provided by Xerox:

• Studies show that color can improve brand recognition by up to 80%. Color is the third opportunity for creating a memorable brand - along with your picture and word choices. People will sometimes know your color palette better than they'll know the specifics of your design.
• Color makes your marketing materials more memorable. 39% more memorable, in fact. How often have you seen a color and been reminded of a company - like UPS brown or IBM blue?
• Color can highlight important information. People often look at printed materials for about 2.5 seconds before they decide to throw it out or keep it. They look at webpages for sometimes as little as a second before deciding whether to click away. If you highlight important facts with color, or use color to make your headline very visible, there's a better chance that those facts and headlines will be read.
• Color increases comprehension of your message by up to 73%. Colors all have meanings associated with them, and can make the viewer feel different emotions. If you align your color choices with your message, you will make your message stronger and make your designs more effective.

Branding Question: Choosing Colors For Your Brand

 How do I choose colors for my brand?

This is a huge question! Colors are incredibly important to any brand - and they come into play in a variety of ways. Here are several factors that should be considered when picking colors from your brand, in order of importance:

1. Meaning. The meanings of the colors that you choose help convey the emotions you'd like to show with your brand. Each color can have a psychological effect. Decide on your business's brand personality first, and choose colors that are commonly associated with the personality you want to demonstrate. This web page has a representative list of color meanings: http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-meaning.html

2. Relation. The relationship of the colors within your brand to one another. Some colors look better together, while others clash. You want to choose colors that are attractive together - and that "go" together.

3. Contrast. It is important that you have colors of different value and intensity available to work with in your brand. Then, you can make sure that you have colors to use in elements that are next to each other that won't blend together too much. You can also have foreground and background colors. Colors of different contrast also help colorblind people to distinguish your brand elements from one another.

4. Trends. You've probably noticed that the colors of clothes in stores go through different color palettes with the seasons - often pastels in spring, brights in summer, and deeper jewel tones at the holidays. Colors for business brands also go through trends.  For example, turquoise is the color of the year for 2010. You can see more information about turquoise here: http://www.pantone.com/pages/pantone/Pantone.aspx?pg=20705&ca=4. Trends are both good and bad in branding. If you happen to be on-trend with your color choices, your materials can look very modern. But, once those colors go out of style, you can quickly look dated. Be aware of color trends, and use trendy colors as seasonal highlights. But, don't choose your brand colors based on the colors of the moment.

5. Illusion. Colors can change the way that other colors look just by being next to one another. This is called "simultaneous contrast". For example, if you put a yellow-green colored square next to a yellow square, it will look more yellow. If you put the same yellow-green next to a green square, the yellow-green will look more green. This is an important consideration in a brand because you want to make sure that your colors always look true.

Check Your Brand Colors In Daylight

When choosing colors for your brand (Pantone colors for your logo, secondary/support colors, and even paper colors), do so in the daylight, and not under incandescent or fluorescent light. Looking at the colors under sunlight ensures that you're seeing the color accurately.

Q&A: What color should my logo be?

QUESTION:

Which color should my logo be if I'm in the network marketing industry?

ANSWER:

Your color palette should communicate a part of your company's story - so the first step is for you to decide what your company's full story is. Your story will include:

• Who you are: your company's personality
• What you do: your products/ services and their benefits
• What makes you different from your competition and
• Who you can best help (target audience)

Once you have that, then you should start designing the logo with the icon first - design the icon to be unique and eye catching and to tell as much of the above story as you can. Then, choose fonts that also communicate your story. Finally, apply colors that round out and fill out the story.

So, as you can see, without more information, I can't tell you what colors would work for your business - there are many other questions to be answered before I can make that call.

I hope this helps!

Colors in Corporate Culture

When choosing colors for a logo that will be used with a corporate target audience, go for a palette that fits in but stands out at the same time. My client, Alex Dail of RightMoves, sums it up perfectly:

I want the colors to fit within corporate culture, but just. Put another way I like that my logo is distinctive, but I am thinking it may be a good idea to have a slight distinction in the colors to so it grabs the eye. Stated differently, I would like the color choice to separate me slightly from the pack, but within the bounds of acceptability.

Color and Branding

"A study carried out by the Seoul International Color Expo found that color goes so far as to increase brand recognition by up to 80 percent. When asked to approximate the importance of color when buying products, 84.7 percent of total respondents claimed that color amounted to more than half the criterion they consider when they're choosing a brand."

Martin Lindstrom, Buy-ology, page 155

Color facts

Color iss a really powerful tool in your design arsenal.

• 62-90% of product assessment is based on color alone.
• Color increases brand recognition by up to 80% (especially if the color is used consistently across all marketing and media)
• Color can improve readership up to 40% (if your information looks good, then people are more likely to want to read it.
• Color increases comprehension by 73% (think about the impact that color makes on charts and graphs - an otherwise unintelligible black and white pie chart can make more sense in color)

Initial facts are from the Allegra Print and Imaging newsletter.