Where to Find Inspiration For Your Brand's Color Palette
We draw inspiration from our surroundings every day. We can spend time in tea and coffee shops, taste the hot tea on our tongues, and something will just click.
It's a special moment when you find inspiration from your surroundings. And from there, you can expand on that idea! Whether it's through writing in your journal, drawing, or keeping that momentum going by exploring your city!
Finding Inspiration for Blades Creative Clients
As a designer, I look for inspiration in everything. Certain music has inspired logo designs, a night out with friends has inspired blogs (like this one!), and some books have inspired fonts that I use.
One thing at Blades Creative that I'm always looking for inspiration for is my client's color palettes. Of course, we can pull inspiration for color palettes from literally anywhere. Still, in design and, I guess, life in general, color plays such a big impact and can influence us in such substantial ways that I want to be very intentional when putting together a brand's colors.
The Power of a Brand's Color Palette
Developing a brand's color palette is key to how a brand tells its story. Color is one of the first things people notice about a brand, and it's how businesses can introduce themselves with little to no words.
Color has the power to influence emotions and convey information. According to ColorCom, "85% of consumers believe color is the biggest motivator when choosing a particular product, while 92% acknowledge visual appearance as the most persuasive marketing factor overall."
Because of how impactful color can be, it's important to be thoughtful and intentional about the colors you use for your brand.
Different Colors and their Different Energies
If you're about to brand (or rebrand) your business and feel blocked when it comes to colors, it's helpful to know what vibes each color has.
The color designers use in branding can impact how your audience buys and talks about your brand because colors carry different energies. For example, have you noticed how blue can make us feel calm or yellow can make us feel happy and friendly?
It's fascinating how color can uniquely impact our thoughts and feelings. Choosing the right color palette can guide your audience to take a specific action or influence their mood. But, how do you pick these colors? Where do you find inspiration?
Where to Find Inspiration for a Brands Color Palette
Your Story & Personality
Tell your business's story - why did you start it? When telling this story, note your tone, energy, and how you feel. Are you serious and calm? Or witty and fun? Use your tone to guide your color choices.
When I rebranded Blades Creative, I drew inspiration from salt lamps. I loved that soft reddish-pink glow and the aura of comfort and calm these lamps radiate. It’s what I wanted my clients to feel through the Blades Creative Process - comfortable and calm.
So when you start thinking about your brand - ask yourself what’s your tone? How do you want your community to feel? For example, if you have a fun and bubbly tone to your story - yellow, orange, or pink would be great colors to lean into.
Or if while you’re telling your story, you realize that nature influenced your business's growth - you could lean into more earthy tones!
Your Audience
Another way to find inspiration is to look to your audience. How do you want them to feel when they see your brand? Think about how you want to influence your audience. For example, do you want to appear youthful? Or more mysterious? Or elegant?
By knowing the influence you want to have, you can narrow down the colors that associate with that!
If you're still stuck, try this exercise - grab a pen and paper and describe your business as an event or vacation. What would it be?
If you're a meditation app, your business could be described as a calm beach vacation. Picture what that would look like. In this example, you would most likely see sand, clear blue skies, and palm trees. Use that vision to guide your color choices, so for this app, you may choose the color of sand, a deep blue, and a shade of green that matches the palm trees.
By relating your brand to a vacation or event, you can use your natural instincts and truly visualize your brand, what it feels like, and the colors that resonate.
Your Competitors
Look at Bumble - there are so, so many different dating apps out there, but what makes Bumble stand out?
Bumble's brand recognition all starts with its story - The founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd was also the co-founder of Tinder. If you're unfamiliar with her time at Tinder, she left the company and sued for sexual discrimination. Afterward, Whitney created Bumble - where women have the power and get to make the first move! Since then, Bumble has created BumbleBFF and BumbleBiz, but the color palette has stayed consistent.
The Bumble color palette perfectly fits the mood and the app's mission. The color yellow is a young, fun, and enthusiastic color that speaks to the youthfulness of the company and its promise to create a fun online space to meet your future “honey.”
From the honeycomb logo, the bright yellow color, the name, and the tone of its brand, Bumble's branding is truly one of a kind and continues to stand out against its competitors.
Bumble took the time to research their audience and look at their competitors in an effort to stand out.
So when working on your brand - what colors are your competitors using? You don't want to get lost or blend in. Look to your competitors and find inspiration in being different.
Your business is yours, and your color palette is how you can separate your business from your competitors and shine in your own light.
Want to See the Magic a Thoughtfully Inspired Color Palette Can Have?
There are infinite colors in our beautiful world, and they all say something different. So when looking at your brand story, audience, and competitors, you can start identifying the colors that resonate with your brand. Is your head spinning? I know. It’s a lot. While choosing a color palette sounds simple, you can't help but to overthink!
That's why working with a design studio like Blades Creative is so helpful. We have experience in color design and branding, so we can look at your business and its message holistically and translate it into your brand identity.
When partnering with Blades Creative Design Studio, we'll take the guesswork out of choosing a color palette. Translating your brand message from words to colors can be challenging. Let's make this experience as magical as can be - Get in touch!