Choosing the Right Color Combination for your Design

Humans are visual beings and will always respond differently to the various colors they see in marketing messages. This makes choosing the right color combination a crucial skill for every designer who is interested in getting the most from their designs. A wrong combination can affect the credibility of the design and portray the message in a negative light.

The right color combination, on the other hand, can impact positively on the customers and enhance the brand awareness of the business. Listed here are five tips you can use to get the right color combination for every design you consider. The tips apply to all types of design, including websites and not just graphic alone.

Simplicity Reigns

If you want to get the right color combination for every design project you work on, then you must be open minded towards simplicity. This primarily involves choosing a few basic colors and manipulating them to bring out the particular effects you want. As a matter of fact, using more than five colors in one design can be considered to be disastrous unless you have vast experience in design, and you are accustomed to using a range of many colors at the same time.

The danger of using a lot of colors concurrently is that you increase the likelihood of getting the viewers confused, and in the process making it hard for them to decipher the message you wanted them to get. It is also advisable that you make it a habit of starting with the primary colors before moving on to the others.

Let your Brand Colors Give you the direction

In every design project you work on, there will always be brand colors for the product or the business for which you are making the design. If you feel overwhelmed or lost, and you are not sure about the right color combination to use for the design, just turn to the brand colors for direction.

You can use the predominant colors of the business brand, or you can use other complimentary colors to the brand colors in your design. However, you must maintain the identity of the business at all times, and this requires that you should never stray away from the brand colors. It is the only way to stay consistent throughout all the designs.

Consider the mood you desire to communicate

Designs will always be intended to evoke particular moods or emotion on the audiences. Colors are very useful in evoking different emotions. Hence, it is important to consider the mood you want to communicate when thinking about the right color combination. The following is a rough guide to some of the colors and the particular moods they invoke in the viewers-:

• Red – shows passion, vitality, aggressiveness and strength.
• Gray – show practicality, authority, corporate mentality, somberness
• Green – health, tranquility, freshness
• Black – seriousness, distinctiveness, and boldness
• White – truthfulness, refined, purity
• Orange – warmth, fun, cheerfulness
• Purple – royalty, wealth, success, wisdom
• Blue – authority, dignity, faithfulness, security

Depending on what your design is all about, you need to be careful with the predominant color because it will communicate the mood to your clients and customers.

Don’t use the same colors as your competition

Many people hate their color schemes to be used by other businesses offering same products and services. While considering the right color combination, it pays to spy on your competition to identify their color patterns so that you avoid using the same colors in your design. In design, you need to stand out for you to attract attention and get recognized by your existing customers. This calls for complete uniqueness in every design you come up with for your businesses.

It is also important to remember that you risk being accused of copyright infringement when the best you can do is to adopt the colors of other business. However, as you avoid using the same colors as your competition when deciding on the right color combination for your designs, you should make sure that your final choices are in tandem with your industry and are complimentary to your brand.

Learn to use palettes

Palettes will hasten the process of choosing the right color combination hence it is important that you learn how to use them. Palettes are a good idea because you will be relying on combinations that other designers have created and tested to be effective in the past. But even with the palettes, you must have the objective as well as the targeted audience in mind. The internet is an awesome resource where you can find a plethora of palettes to use to make the design process faster. Just be sure to take your time and select the ones that will be the best fit for your current design project.

Learn More about choosing the right typography here!