The importance of color to your website and branding
Color is one of the most significant aspects of any website.
Color has power, color is persuasive, and color is compelling. Having color on your website cleverly will add potency to your brand.
What is Color Theory
Color theory is how color affects the mind. And when it comes to websites, color theory determines how various color decisions or combinations can dictate how the user interacts with your website.
For example, let’s explore nine fundamental colors, their associated meanings, and a few brands closely associated with that color.
- Red: confidence, excitement, energy, passion, and love
- Target, CNN, Coca Cola
- Orange: excitement, enthusiasm, friendliness, and warmth
- Nickelodeon, Amazon, Mozilla
- Yellow: joy, youthful, optimism, attention
- McDonald’s, Best Buy, Sprint
- Green: fresh, relaxed, natural, trustful, growth, and health
- Whole Foods, John Deere, Starbucks
- Blue: peaceful, calm, secure, dependable, and wise
- Twitter, Lowes, JP Morgan, American Express
- Many financial firms use cool blue tones to communicate trust and dependability
- Twitter, Lowes, JP Morgan, American Express
- Violet: creativity, imagination, power, and luxury
- Yahoo, Hallmark, Cadbury
- Pink: sweet, playful, compassionate, soft, and intuitive
- Barbie, Victoria’s Secret, Cosmopolitan
- Black: bold, serious, elegant, mysterious, and dramatic
- Gucci, Chanel, Nike
- Grey: respect, patience, wisdom, and balance
- Apple, Mercedes Benz, Wikipedia
Clever use of color and the blending of colors is an essential aspect of branding, including a well-developed website.
Going beyond just one color to the blending of many colors or “Color Palettes” will take the use of color in branding to the next level.
So what is a “Color Palette”?
Color palettes are simply a few colors that work well together. The intentional use of color palettes in websites will add not only beauty but also emotions. Website elements such as headers and footers are prime for the benefit of branding colors.
Here is an example of a color palette.
BALANCING ACT
Balancing Act is a complementary palette of color whose natural balance of warm and cool tones support and enhance one other. The brilliance of PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri is intensified within this artfully calibrated palette, injecting a feeling of liveliness and visual vibration.
Next time you are looking at a website, pay attention to how that website uses color to create a branding statement.