Choosing the right colour palette for your website and logo

Colours play an important role in the lives of human beings so choosing the right colour pallet for your website and logo is really important. We are visually driven creatures and colour touches us all at our most basic level. Red is associated as a natural warning, similarly with yellow. We read the world with colour and our associations to it. Equally colour evokes emotions and convey messages just as well as words. Just because we live in the modern world with technologies and comforts doesn’t mean that colour has lots it’s power over us. Because of this colour is important in all aspects of design, from your logo, to your website and promotional material.

For small businesses with limited resources, trying to determine the type of colours and theme to be selected can prove to be more of a challenging task. This is because of the presence a huge number of themes and colours to select from. But the right choice of themes and colours should weigh as importantly in design as layout and content. This is why larger businesses with bigger budgets spend a lot of money getting their brand just right.

What constitutes an excellent logo or web design?

This is subjective, but we all know when we see something really special. There is something about how the font, colour and words sit that please the eye and give the viewer a feel for the business. It’s important therefore to decide whether if you business is modern and innovative, whether to then have a logo that is bold and bright. If you are a professional company such as a law firm, a multicoloured logo with bold text is probably not the right approach. The main thing to consider is thinking about how you want your business to be portrayed, then use this information to decide on font weight, whether to use an icon, colour and layout.

We believe that if a company is starting out that ‘logo first’ design is important. Get the branding of the logo right and use that to flow into the website and promotional material.

Colour associations that may help when thinking about your logo or design:

• Red : Danger, aggression, violence, passion and heat.
• Orange : Fun, youth, energy, innovation and modern thinking.
• Yellow : Cowardice, sunshine, warmth, and friendliness.
• Green : Nature, greed, ethics, food, growth, and fresh.
• Blue : Professionalism, integrity, sincerity, success, authority and tranquility.
• Purple : Royalty, luxury, wisdom, dignity, wealth, riches and creativity.
• Black : Power, sophistication, and death.
• White : Purity, cleanliness, simplicity and naiveté.
• Brown : Outdoors, plants, growth, nature.
• Pink :  Flirty, fun, feminine and love.

Things to consider when trying to select logo / web design for the small business

There are several things that one should take into consideration when trying to select the most appropriate colours for the logo/web design:

• Who are the target audiences?
• Where is the logo / web design to be used?
• What type of colour pallet would better represent the business?
• Your logo may be used on banners, cards, adverts, mugs, stationary and billboards so think ahead. Do you want several versions of your logo or one that can be used for all purposes?
• Are the colour palettes you are looking at easily printed on each platform?
• Compare your design thoughts to your competitors, what are they doing? How can you do it better?

These days colours play a pivotal role in marketing so choosing the right colour pallet for your website and logo is important. Making use of same colours in the web design, logo design, physical locations and promotional materials create consistency and a feel to the company. People begin to associate these colours and images with the brand and to assist in gaining customer loyalty and trust.

If you are looking at a new logo, or rebranding our website you should get in touch.