Color in Graphic Design

Nothing is more important than color when it comes to designing marketing material for your client

4 Things to consider with color

There are three main areas a graphic designer should consider when choosing colors for a brand identity:

  1. Does the color appropriately represent the client’s brand/message?
  2. Does the color appropriately communicate the client’s brand/message to the target audience?
  3. Is the color free to use? Does any competitor already “own” the brand color?
  4. What emotional, psychological, and symbolic meanings are associated with your color choice in the culture you are designing for?

A helpful video introducing color

Color Consistency is a Challenge

Your color choice must remain consistent when reproduced across many products and mediums. That’s why it’s best to not choose the main brand color that’s out of the ordinary. I’d stay away from neons, pastels, and metallics. They are very hard to reproduce in many printing processes.

As a designer and art director, I’ve had to try to ensure that a brand’s color will look the same over many, many marketing products. It’s never easy and it’s never perfect.

Think of the challenge Pepsi’s designers have when trying to maintain consistency over all these products sold and printed all over the world.

Which soda brand colors are available?

Let’s say you want to create a new soda brand. Which colors are available? How difficult will it be for you to choose a new color that will set itself apart from the rest of the field?

Wait . . . What about social media?

So, if each company should own a certain color why are most of the social media brands medium blue? My educated guess is that it is hard to find a color that appeals to the entire planet and crossover to every possible culture. Repeated research has found that around the world blue is chosen as the most popular color in all cultures. So the social media companies probably went with the color that would appeal to the largest number of people and potential customers.

Some have updated their logos to be black and white. Tumbler and myspace did this. Instagram has always been black.

Anything Wrong Here?

Color is an important part of identifying brands, products, services, ideas, and messages. Color is one of the first things we see when we encounter marketing material for a product, service or idea. Image how these wrong color combinations would confuse the loyal customer.

Color Comes From the Sun

The energy that the Sun creates radiates outward onto Earth. All this energy is made up of many different sizes of waves. All of these different waves, or radiation, make up what we call the electromagnetic spectrum. The electromagnetic spectrum is all the different wavelengths combined.

Human eyes can see a small portion of the waves in the electromagnetic spectrum. This small portion is referred to as visible light. This is where our colors come from.

Color is simply receptor cells in our eyes detecting certain wavelengths of radiation from the Sun.

Color Wheel

Warm colors are the reds, oranges, and yellows. These colors tend to move forward and pop off a page.

Cool colors do the opposite. The blues, greens, and violets tend to recede and move to the background.

Using the Color Wheel to Design

Green highway signs for safety

Researchers claim that the last color wavelength humans see best at twilight is green. This is why many highway and road signs are green. The green signs also blend into a green environment nicely too. Meaning that they don’t create a driving distraction with too many busy colors.

Complementary Colors and After-Image

Complementary colors are two colors directly across the 12-step color wheel from each other. Our favorite Christmas colors, red and green, are perfect examples of complementary colors. Your favorite sports team might use blue and orange

Did you know that your eyes can give you any color’s complement?

Do you ever need a harmonious color to go with one of the main colors in a design? Your eyes can do it for you. Simply stare at the color you are starting with, then move your eyes slightly to the side on a white background (paper or screen) and the complementary color will appear. It only lasts for a short time so you might have to do it a few times.

If you prefer, Adobe Illustrator offers the same function. The tool is in the Color palette > Complement.

Try this tried-and-true complement activity. Stare at the black dot on top for about 15 seconds, then at the bottom black dot. See the Flag? Pretty cool.

Hue

Hue simply refers to the name of a color.

Value

Value refers to the lightness or darkness of a hue or color.

Intensity

Intensity refers to the brightness or dullness of a color.

Change Value and Intensity, and you Change the Color Harmony

Here is an example showing how slight changes to your color palette’s values and intensities can positively affect your art’s color harmony and unity.

Also, notice how the warm colors pop out, and the cool colors recede to the background. The art has more depth and appeal in the second example.