Colour scheme is crucial when it comes to branding. Whether you want to increase quality, success, thought leadership, or establish credibility, colour can help you achieve it all.

The question though, is how do you create a colour scheme that highlights your brand, echoes with your audiences, and differentiates you in your industry?

Audience

When it comes to targeting your audiences through branding and colour schemes, it’s important to be confident in your company’s personalities. As a good example, the colour scheme of a brand new retail store for children should be vastly different than that of a legal company that works for large corporations. Why? Because your colour scheme should correspond to the needs and preferences of your destination audience. If the search reveals an audience is conservative, a designer might be hesitant to push the boundaries of design and colour. The idea of having an unusual, odd, or unexpected colour might be perceived as unprofessional or distract from the company’s message.

Prospective customers, partners, and patients are the bottom line of your business, so be sure to keep them in mind when designing your new website.

Competition

Take a step back and scope out what your competitors are doing in terms of colour palettes. The health sciences industry, for example, has an overabundance of blue and green, which makes companies in that field look both identical and undistinguished.

With this in mind, as digital designers, we are constantly trying to add pieces of unique, distinguishable colour to keep brands looking modern and fresh amongst their competitors. Say a client loved blue and it was clear they were on the conservative side. We’d suggest that they embody lime green into the mix to differentiate themselves. This accent colour would allow them to maintain their conservative feel, while at the same time set themselves apart with a modern twist.

When businesses choose an unexpected colour, it implies that the business is innovative, forward-thinking, and willing to take risks in the industry. The colour green is often associated with ‘Go,’ which implies that colours can have alternative messages and subconsciously drive audiences to engage when used strategically.

Be disruptive

The phrase “Disruptive” is a major buzzword in the creative digital world. A disruptive element in design is something so against the grain that it forces observers to stop and notice it. Take pink as one good example. Some people have this preconceived notion about pink, they think it’s unprofessional, and designers tend to steer clear of it. However, huge successes have been proven with pink used as an accent colour because it’s disruptive – it demands attention and forces audiences to acknowledge the uniqueness of it.

Pink can be incorporated into various colour themes, including blue, green, and purple. This acts as a reminder that pink isn’t just for girls and that it can add a whole new dimension to a design.

Push boundaries!

A good designer will want to take a fresh perspective on your branding in a way you’ve never even considered.

It’s easy to get caught up with what you’re ‘used to’ or what your business has relied on over the years. Change from the ‘norm’ can be scary for any business but through strategic disruptive concepts your business can grow, expand and be unique in the industry.