Marketers use color in innovative ways. From altering brand personality to portraying the company’s vision, there’s much more to color than meets the eye.
Colors influence moods, feelings, and attitudes toward products and brands. They differentiate a company from its competitors or accentuate its brand personality. While personal experiences, preferences, and other external factors make color psychology subjective, the impact of color in marketing, both on the visual and subconscious level, is undeniable.
Any web design expert in MN will agree that color is the most important design property, especially in the context of websites. Color coordination helps communicate a clear message and enhance the user experience.
Perception and Persuasion: The Impact of Color in Web Design
Among the many influences of color, perception has the most substantial claim. Studies in aesthetics and color psychology reveal that color plays a big role in forming how consumers will perceive a brand. An Emerald Insight study shows that when people assess a product, about 62 to 90 percent of the assessment is based on colors alone.
Here are the most accepted color associations or impressions in marketing that may be useful when designing websites:
- Yellow: Optimism, clarity, warmth, outdoorsy
- Orange: Friendly, cheerful, confidence
- Red: Excitement, daring, youthful, bold
- Purple: Creative, imaginative, wise, upper-class
- Blue: Trust, dependable, strength, sincerity, honest
- Green: Peaceful, growth, health, successful
- Gray: Balance, neutral, calm, new-edge, luxury
- Multi-colored: Diversity
Color Coordination: Communication and Design Unity
Websites, however, don’t deal with just one or two colors. Designers would spend days to weeks coming up with the best color scheme for a single website. This is where coordination comes in. For designers who are articulate in the language and psychology of color, creating harmonies is a cinch.
Here are principles to live by:
1. Coordinating Color with Images – websites that are image-heavy benefit the most from color coordination because it creates unity and harmony. Brands would want to be associated with a single, consistent story or message, and the color scheme helps bring that to the fore. Whether the image is in the background or foreground, the rest of the elements in the site should blend well with it instead of against it.
2. Contrasting – designers use the contrast scale to make essential elements, such as a chunk of text or focal image, stand out. Popular examples are the frugal use of bold accent colors in a minimal grayscale background, as well as the monochromatic color scheme, which directs all the attention to the visual or textual content. While monochromatic or minimalist schemes result in simple but stunning websites, achieving that look is no walk in the park. Be cautious and clever when deciding which color will dominate and which one will support. And keep in mind that even when you’re emphasizing a specific element, there should still be a sense of proportion.
3. Clear Communication – when picking out a color scheme, it’s crucial to achieve a balance between design unity and clear communication. An attractive color scheme is useless if the user can’t read the text properly or the colors don’t help the user infer meaning. Think of the website as a person or the human representation of the brand. What traits, quirks, or values would you want to highlight to make a good impression? What kind of image do you want to project? Color can help you communicate those intentions.
On the front end of web design, color coordination doesn’t exist in a vacuum, nor is it a simple case of branding. It brings together the complex interplay of color, typography, and other visual elements and functionalities that help the user interface achieve its purpose: to attract, inform, delight, and inspire.
Designing a website? Check out this list of sites that show mastery of color coordination.
For color perfect web design solutions in Minnesota, fill out the short Sievers Creative form today, and get in touch!
