Nail Your Colours To The Mast: A Brand Palette For Your Startup
Starting a business is exciting. You’ve got the product, the business plan, and you’re keen to go full steam ahead. So, how do you go about choosing your brand colours?
This decision isn’t just about picking your favourite shades. The palette that represents you is a strategic choice that affects how people feel about your business, what they remember, and whether they trust you.
Colours are your signal flags
Big brands know that colour is an instant visual cue. It’s non-verbal, universal, and incredibly powerful. If you think of a fast food chain, a supermarket or a football team, straight away you’ll have a colour in mind.
As a startup, your goal is to build immediate recognition and a sense of trust. Your colours are fundamental to achieving that; it’s important to have a consistent, recognisable palette for your brand.
You will need more than just a single shade: a primary colour and, often, a set of secondary and accent colours. This combination has to work together everywhere, whether it’s on your business card, website, advertising, or social media.
Charting your brand personality
Picking a colour is not just about shouting louder than the competition, or finding something that is unusual. Being distinctive is a good thing, but before anything else it needs to be true to your brand personality.
Ask yourself: What does my brand feel like?
Do you want your brand to project trustworthiness and reliability?
Do you want it to feel passionate and exciting?
Does your startup need to be calming, natural, and focused on wellness?
Or do you want to feel sophisticated, exclusive, or elegant?
Your colour choices have to align with this core character. You need a palette that is true to the ethos of the brand.
Navigating colour psychology
From the oppressive blocks of Rothko to the design of hospital wards, the power of colour is something people have always tried to understand.
Let’s take a deeper look at the different psychological impact of colours. (Bear in mind that they can mean different things in different cultures; do some research if your audience is international.) Here’s a quick breakdown of the main themes:
Blue
Trust, stability, logic, intelligence, calm
Common Industries: Tech, Finance, Healthcare, Insurance
Red
Passion, urgency, excitement, energy, action
Common Industries: Food, Automotive, Entertainment
Yellow/Orange
Optimism, warmth, energy, friendliness, creativity
Common Industries: Food, Leisure, Education, Creative Services
Green
Growth, health, nature, serenity, balance
Common Industries: Wellness, Environment, Finance (wealth)
Purple
Wisdom, luxury, spirituality, creativity, fantasy
Common Industries: Beauty, Premium Products, Education
Black/White
Sophistication, authority, modernity, elegance
Common Industries: Fashion, Art, High-end Technology
When choosing your palette, think about the emotional engagement you want to create. You're telling a story, and the colours are the atmosphere of that story.
Building a shipshape system
Around your primary colour, which you’ll use most often, especially in your logo and key calls to action or headlines, you’ll need secondary colours to provide graphic backgrounds, supporting elements and highlights.
We often recommend focusing on a simple three-colour structure. You can use colour theory to build two secondary colours onto your hero colour with the colour wheel.
Your primary colour is the main colour associated with your brand. This should be used most often, especially in your logo and key calls to action.
Your secondary colours are complementary or contrasting colours used for supporting elements, like subheadings, graphic backgrounds, or large areas of a web page.
Anchored in legibility
Your brand needs to be easy to understand, so your colours need to contrast properly. For instance, yellow text on a white background won't pass the legibility test.
Look out for colours that clash - they can visually "vibrate" and cause eye strain.
It’s also worth testing your palette across different media: The colours on your screen (RGB) have to be correctly translated to print (CMYK) and web (Hex codes). If you have merchandise, it’s often difficult to match custom colours across items.
Hoist your colours
A well-chosen palette is a strategic decision that helps all your marketing work harder and ensures your brand is powerful and consistent. Get in touch to see how we can work with you to shape your brand personality and find the right palette to match it, so you act like a big fish from the word go.
(Image: Sophie Brocart / Unsplash)
