You’ve decided on your business and chosen your designer, and now you’re ready to select the business colors that best represent you for your brand kit and brand assets. This is one of the more important tasks for your business. The colors that you choose will define how others view you, the mood of your business and even how much your company is trusted. 

Your color choices will impact a number of future considerations, including printing costs for media and collateral. This is why many small companies simply choose black and white. Black and white can be effective when used properly, and it will never increase your print costs. 

Factoring in Printing Costs

The printing industry focuses on processes. To understand the process, we have to look at the types. Each color has an associated format with it. To that end, each color has the following: 

Each of these processes is a way of looking at printing selection. 

• Four Color Printing is the use of CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). Together, these colors can form any other color in the wheel by overlapping and shading the base colors. Four-color processes are applied as tiny dots to create the visual effect of a full-color image. 
• Spot Printing is slightly different. Each color is mixed and printed individually and can exactly match the PMS (Pantone Matching System) colors. Spot printing uses simple (and most popular) black and white. It’s cheap, effective and recognizable. 
• RGB colors are the use of Red, Green and Blue. This results in a fairly close, but not exact, match to any color. 

Color Schemes

With the variety of colors available, we must choose the type of color and understand that it will impact our printing costs. 

Color Psychology

There are hundreds, thousands of colors to choose from when you begin developing a logo. The easiest way is to choose a single color, then broaden that focus to contrasting, monochromatic or analogous palettes. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers, friends and family for feedback. 

Blue: We often associate blue with a clear blue sky, a beautiful ocean, and wide open spaces. This color is the most popular brand color for a reason – it’s associated with trust, security, confidence, responsibility, inspiration and vigilance. Just take a look at the nation’s flag to see how important this color is to our world. 

Blue can be a great option for companies associated with healthcare, banking, information technology and insurance. 

Red: Red is a somewhat divisive color primarily due to its association with both love and hate. When you see red, you are considered “angry” (his face turned red). When you’re in love, you associate red with passion and love. 

This color also indicates hardiness, valor, and competitiveness. The key to red is to use it in small doses, but if you use it in larger doses, consider offsetting with more “words”. Red can be overbearing, but in small doses, it’s an effective color for small businesses. Need proof? Over 75% of the world’s flags have the color red. This says a lot about our perception of red.

Purple: With 196 countries in the world, only a few contain purple. That’s because purple is generally associated with royalty, wealth, power, ambition and nobility. Not exactly negative, but it can be taken that way if you don’t consider the other connotations which are luxury, magic, devotion, loyalty, independence and mystery. For luxury brands, this may be an effective choice. Choose a font to offset any negative connotation or decide if you want to be seen as a luxury brand that is rather snobbish. 

Yellow: Yellow and its variants are often associated with optimism, energy, joy and simplicity. But, on the negative side, it’s often associated with cowardice, betrayal, and danger. When choosing yellow tones, identify the one that works towards joy and intellect. This is also a strong color that can be used to offset other colors. 

Green: For many people, green is associated with natural forests, freedom to roam, and calm tranquility. However, it can also be viewed as money, envy (“green with envy”) and stress. Reactions to the color green are highly personal. In most studies, there is an even split between green “motivating” them or “depressing them”. 

At Moonlit Media, we begin with one color to use as a focus, then expand to monochromatic shades, monochromatic, or analogous colors to complement the design.

Whichever color choice you make, remember that there are hundreds of variants of each color and you are not limited. But, too many choices can make your page and logo look busy and may lead to a result you didn’t intend. 

Popular Big Brand Colors

Let’s examine some color choices from big brands and see how they are used. 

Whichever colors you select, be sure they are representative of your business, your business ethic, and the feeling you want to portray to your client.