This is an article “How Colors Affect Your Design” by Marc Warren
Roses are red, violets are blue—somehow, there’s something wrong with this basic poetry prefix because if you study color psychology, rose is a color that’s apart from red, and violets are certainly not blue. A deeper look into the study will tell you that colors can elicit various feelings when integrated with design elements.
How do colors subconsciously trigger thoughts and ideas about your blogs or ads? By carefully designing color combinations that go with your intended messages, you can create recall in your target market’s consciousness that can effectively convince them to give you a try!
Here’s a list of how some of the most widely used colors can affect your audience’s feelings to help you come up with great designs for your marketing collaterals.
Blue
As one of the most common colors used in blogs and websites for how it brings out a feeling of calm, cool, trustworthiness, and reliability, most successful brands like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn use blue because many people find it easy to look at. It also goes well with a variety of design elements and styles and is very easy to play around with. Shortly said, you can hardly do wrong by going with blue as your main color for your key visuals. Blue is soothing and suggests clear thoughts and focus and, for most consumers, that’s really all they want.
Red
Red is an aggressive color that goes well with any message that calls audiences into action. Have you ever seen the TV series Money Heist and how those bright red jumpsuits go well with those animated Salvador Dali masks? That kind of color combination works as red evokes physical response and activity. It is associated with energy and can easily be paired with other colors to create unique and suggestive messages. Add an accent of black into your design and you get a fiercer look that can mean no-nonsense business. Exhibit A, B, and C: NBA champion teams Houston Rockets, Chicago Bulls, and Miami Heat.
Green
Ah! The color of money! Though it can also be associated with nature, cleanliness, health, or freshness, most traditional menthol cigarettes such as Newport, Salem, and Marlboro use green to make their customers feel that minty taste with every puff. Meanwhile, Starbucks thrives on its simple green against white design as it suggests a cool status symbol that’s almost synonymous to class and luxury. Incorporating green into your blog also makes for an easier read when it comes to textual content. Try mixing the secondary color green with shades of primary colors, red and blue, and see where it takes you.
Orange
Visualize the Nickelodeon brand and ask yourself what you instantly feel? Does it make you feel excited and ready for some fun? Orange also connotes energy but with a lesser aggressiveness than red does as its shade of yellow can suggest positivity and warmth. It’s a design element that can immediately provoke enthusiasm and is very effective in commanding attention, just as how it is placed in traffic lights. When designing your blogs or logos and want to come up with an earthly theme, orange usually goes well with brown or green accents. Pairing it with pink, like how Dunkin Donuts did, gives you a sweet flavor that definitely goes well with that feeling of excitement.
Studying color psychology can do a lot for your design and boost your brand as a top-of-mind choice for consumers. You’d certainly want to effectively communicate your messages via blogs and ads, and creating color combinations is an important part in doing the trick.
So, the next time you plan a design, make sure you know your colors well because otherwise, you might end up losing visitors or customers due to poor visual messaging or mistaken cues.
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