Colour speaks to our eyes as words speak to our ears according to Jim Krause in the “Colour Index”.
It’s not only a fascinating tool for storytelling but also for business.
The digital space is extremely noisy hence colour, when used right, can be extremely effective in building your brand.
Because of the extreme depth of the subject, colour can be confusing.
If you’re launching a new vegan e-commerce brand for example, how do you make sure that your Brand Colour will resonate with your ideal customer?
In this article, I’d like to share my thoughts on how you can choose the right colour for your business whether that’s deciding on the Brand Colours, choosing a Colour Scheme for your Website or planing your next Social Campaign.
On top of that, I’ll share some insights into why colour is important for brands and marketing.
Overview:
- Colour in numbers
- The impact of colour
- Colours and humans
- Context
- How to choose the right colour for your brand / website / advertising campaign?
1. Colour in numbers
Did you know that the human eye can see over 7 millions of colours?
And then, a computer screen can display 1 billion of colours?
Compare that with print where using the CMYK process we can create around 160 thousands of colours.
That’s A LOT of colours.
Let me also add that colour is one of the most meaningful, archaic and instinctive communication forms we have.
The study by Loyola University Maryland shows that colour is registered by our brain first. After that come images, shapes and typography (by the way, images are processed by our eyes 60,000 faster than words).
Let’s think about this for a second. When you’re walking through Oxford street in London - what do you notice first, the yellow shopping bags of Selfridges carried by the passersby - or the Selfridges’ logo on the bags?
We can use colour to very efficiently and quickly communicate the message and build associations with brands or products.
2. The Impact of Colour
90 seconds - it’s how long it takes us on average to make a subconscious judgement about a person, environment, brand or a product. What’s even more interesting, up to 90% of that assessment is based on colour alone.
Moving this concept into the digital world, the numbers are even more skewed.
On average a person spends around 15 seconds on a web page for example.
Or if we want to talk in social media terms, then we have 0.2 seconds to actually stop someone from scrolling past your content.
Successful brands understand the power of colour, that’s why Tiffany, for example, trademarked their iconic light robin-egg blue in 2001. The “Tiffany’s Blue” has been applied extensively throughout the brand’s touchpoints, including packaging, space design and digital marketing communications.
Colour alone can boost brand recognition by 80%.
