Unlocking the Perfect Brand Color

Unlocking the Perfect Brand Color

Well, in the next 2 minutes, you will become a master at brand color selection.

First, let's start with a mind-blowing fact: there are 18 decillion colors out there. Yup, that's 18 with a whopping 33 zeros after it! To put that into perspective, imagine a stack of 18 decillion sheets of paper. That'd reach about 12 quadrillion times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

Now, out of all these colors, we can only see about a million of them. And even then, we rely on the colors being close together to tell the difference. Plus, our perception of color is super skewed, and we perceive colors differently based on our surroundings.

In proper design-speak, there are 5 basic colors (red, orange, yellow, green, and blue) and 3 neutral colors( black, white, and grey). Anything else is a mix of these and I don’t recommend that you do. You can use shades and hues of the colors I mentioned.

But, how do you pick the right brand colors? Here are four common ways:

Based on what you like

This approach is all about you. Your style, and preference. Your design sense. It is a bit egocentric and self-serving. This is commonly done and it is the worst way, really.

Based on what your audience likes

Be careful with this one; your audience might not know what they need. You may have a focus group or send a given set of brand colors to your friends and family. And they give you their opinion. I don’t think you follow their opinion. You see, opinions are like noses - everyone has one.

Based on the meaning of the color

Colors have meanings too! White is all about purity (think Dove's clean and simple packaging), red screams danger or excitement (like Netflix's bold logo), yellow is energetic or cautious (cue McDonald's golden arches), and green is nourishing (hello, Whole Foods' earthy vibe). Or so I hear…

I don’t recommend this method as the most efficient. In fact, I think next week’s newsletter should be about color psychology - that is what this field is called.

Based on what your competitors’ colors are

This should be your go-to method for choosing your brand color. And the hardest for many people. 

The reason the last option is not preferred is that most businesses stretch themselves too much and seemingly have a whole range of competitors. They are a logistics company competing with Majorel, Safaricom, MyDawa, and Uber delivery.

The reason it is not preferred is that businesses are afraid of specializing. They are afraid of taking a stand and declaring which industry they are in. They want to be all and do all. You can’t. Choose a lane and compete in it.

After you choose your lane, do your research.

• Who are you serving?

• Who else is serving them?

• How do they present themselves?

And be different from them. Branding is deliberate differentiation.

• Lyft chose a bold pink color to stand out from Uber's black-and-white scheme.

• Maxion, a tractor company, chose blue since the top two competitors were green (John Deere) and red.

• Naivas is Orange, Carrefour is the new blue (after Nakumatt’s collapse), Quickmart is Red.

• Safaricom is Green, Airtel is Red, Telcom is Blue.

And there you have it, folks! With these tips and examples, you're now ready to rule the world of brand color selection.

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