In this little series we’ve been doing here in The Daily for the last many issues, we’ve been talking about branding and how it ties into the look of your site. And one of the things we need to discuss, too, is…

The COLOR of your site.

We talked a bit about your central branding image (or “hero shot”), often found on your homepage. And we began this whole discussion talking about how branding is, in essence, a feeling and a mental image picture that people will associate with you.

That hero shot is something you want to put a little thought into. I would suggest you not pick some random “nice” photo (or, worse, a stock photo). Instead, think about what a real, solid branding image would be for your brand. As I mentioned before, a good one for me (and I should go create it) would be me sitting in a nice campsite somewhere, next to my motorhome, working on my laptop.

I gotta see if I can make that one happen while I’m still out traveling here. 🙂 Anyway…

That image is going to have certain colors in it. And then the site around it will have certain colors to it.

I would suggest not simply choosing colors you think look good, or is “pretty”. Because what we often think looks good doesn’t necessarily jive with our brand. Not only that, how a color makes you feel isn’t necessarily the same for everybody.

Color Psychology

• Black is sometimes used to indicate power or prestige. Sophistication. Culture. To some, it could be associated with evil or death. Pretty big difference, but it comes down to the target market. In U.S. popular culture, black is often used for power and sophistication, or to communicate wealth.
• White is often used to convey purity, innocence, or a sense of space. Cleanliness. White is also used (and should be used alot) to give space and padding in design elements. People innately desire space, and this is why sites with a good amount of white space often do well and look bettter.
• Red is often used to evoke emotion. It can be used to symbolize love, warmth. It can also be perceived as an emotionally intense color, of love, or anger.
• Blue is often preferred by men and evokes a sense of calmness, orderliness, and trust.
• Green is often used in relation to nature. It can also be used to evoke ideas of peacefulness, luck, health and wealth.
• Yellow is cheery and warm, but it is also one of the more tiring colors to look at. Yellow on site is good for grabbing attention (i.e. a call to action), but generally shouldn’t be used as a primary site color since it causes eyestrain and makes things harder to read.
• Purple is a color of wealth and royalty. It is sometimes used to symbolize wisdom and spirituality.
• Brown can give a sense of strength or reliability. It is conventional.
• Orange is an energy color, especially when combined with yellow or red. Like yellow, it is best used as an attention color (for calls to action), but not as the colors for primary site branding.
• Pink is a love color, and to some a calming color. It is generally considered to be a female color.

With all this in mind, you want to consider the mood or emotion that you want your site to convey, and consider your colors based on that.

Now, we’ll talk more about color in the next issue, but for now…

If you look at YOUR site now, what tone does the color scheme convey?

Do you have a lot of white space?

And, did you consider your colors from the perspective of those you are looking to serve… or just what you thought looked good?

I’ll see ya on the next email. 🙂

– David