Branding + Marketing

Color in Graphic Design: 3 Ways Color Impacts Your Business

Choosing colors to represent your business or nonprofit can be fun and exciting. But how do you choose the right colors for your brand that also appeal to the customers, donors, or clients you’re trying to reach?

Whether it’s piquing interest, creating a sense of trustworthiness, or even improving readability and clarity — understanding how to use color in your brand identity is essential to a thriving small business or nonprofit marketing strategy.

Studies show that color in graphic design plays a vital role in influencing consumer behavior. Choosing the right colors that appeal to your unique audience is essential. So before you rush into choosing a color, there are several things you must understand about how color can positively (and negatively) impact your business.

Keep reading to learn more about the role of color in small business and nonprofit  marketing and branding!

How to Use Color to Effectively Market Your Business

It’s no secret that strategic color use is a powerful tool in marketing your business. Think of Home Depot orange, Target red, or Tiffany blue. Color carries more weight than most people realize! As a nonprofit or small business marketer, it’s essential to research these associations and make educated decisions when choosing colors for branding and marketing initiatives.

Simple changes to the colors of your branding, websites, and product packaging can make a dramatic difference in the effectiveness of growing your business. So it’s not going too far to say that your color choices could actually help you make more money.

Certain colors are associated with different feelings and actions, so using the right color combination can attract customers or push them away. For example, blue tones are often seen as a sign of trustworthiness, while reds can be used to capture attention or evoke excitement. If you’re looking to increase credibility or generate more buzz, take this into account while designing a new logo or website.

Ultimately, by understanding the impact of shades and hues, businesses can create an attractive visual landscape that mirrors their goals and encourages viewers to buy their products or services.

Read More: How Graphic Design and Marketing Work Together to Grow Brand Awareness and Generate Leads

Color Helps Create a Cohesive Brand

A cohesive brand identity is at the heart of any successful brand. It helps an organization stand out from the competition and create a lasting impression on existing and future customers.

Graphic design—especially color choice— is the foundation of developing your small business brand identity.  With the right colors, you can reinforce your brand identity across a range of digital and print media, including packaging design, corporate swag, print ads, online content, or website design.

By strategically incorporating colors into your visual elements, customers begin to make subtle connections between processes—establishing informed patterns amongst marketing messages that increase their understanding of your products and services.

Strategic color choice also helps to:

• Establish consistent recognition levels within a target audience
• Enhance perception around brand values and beliefs
• Reinforce associations with specific products or services

Ultimately, the goal with color choice and brand cohesion is to ensure that your customers recognize your brand quickly and easily no matter the context of the message.

Read More: 5 Things Your Graphic Designer Wants You to Know

Beware of Adding Too Much Color

It may seem counterintuitive, but there is such a thing as too much color as it pertains to graphic design, branding, and marketing your business. This mistake is easy to make but can really work against a business’s strategic marketing goals. It’s always better to use color strategically and minimally. Here’s why:

1. Too much color can be confusing to your audience.

Strategic use of color in graphic design and branding can make a big difference in the overall impact of a message. However, when too much color is used, it can be overwhelming for the audience to decipher what is important or what action should be taken. It can also give the wrong impression about your brand if customers are not able to immediately recognize it due to an overcomplicated design featuring too many colors.

2. Too much color can be expensive.

It’s tempting to want more colors in your logo or corporate branding, but one thing you may not know is that additional colors can be expensive when it comes to printing. Whether you’re printing business cards or company t-shirts, color printing adds up—a cost you don’t want to pass down to your customers.

3. Too much color can limit scalability and versatility.

Brand elements—especially logos—must be scalable and versatile. If your logo has too many colors, you are limiting yourself in terms of functionality. For example, if you overcomplicate your logo with too many different colors, it may only look right on a white background. But what happens when you need to print your logo on a darker color? Always consider every possible scenario to ensure that the colors will make sense in every context.

Read More: Three Reasons Why Your Brand Identity Needs a Refresh

Questions About Color in Graphic Design? We’d Love to Help!

Schedule a meeting with us today if you need help implementing color into your business or nonprofit marketing strategy. Our expert graphic designers can work with you to develop a color scheme and brand identity that beautifully amplifies your brand promise to your audience and increase leads for your business.