Color plays a crucial role in design. It impacts mood, emotion, and behavior. It’s a powerful tool when communicating with customers. Colour selection is an extremely important aspect of website, application and marketing design.
The colour you choose for your brand will send subliminal messages to your target audience about your values, the style of your business, even the nature of your products and services.
Given the importance of colour, researchers have conducted countless studies to determine in detail the impact of colour on marketing and branding.
We’ve assembled some key highlights for you to consider:
• The way colour is used in marketing can increase brand awareness by up to 80%. This means that if you choose the best colours for your marketing material, packaging, and logo design – colours that will appeal to your target market, your business will stand out from your competition.
• Consumers form their first impression of a brand in 90 seconds, and those impressions are strongly influenced by the colour scheme used.
• The color of a product influences up to 93% of buyers.
It is important to choose a colour that reflects your brand personality and values. And don’t just pick a colour you happen to like. Different colours are known to evoke particular feelings and impressions; it’s important to understand the messages communicated by various colours to ensure you’re sending an accurate and appealing message to your customers.
Colour mode is a technical consideration that becomes important as you utilize various media for your marketing and communications. For example, RGB (Red-Green-Blue) colour mode is the mode of choice for digital content, while CMYK (Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black) is the preferred mode to produce quality print products. Each colour space has its own merits and you should always use the space that better suits your purpose.
The RGB color wheel enables you to choose accurate colours for use on various digital media. RGB is an ‘additive’ mode of colour, using a selection of red, green, and blue light to create the desired colours. Equal percentages of Red, Green and Blue light creates white light.
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CMYK is the colour space for printed materials. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key.
“Key” is the colour black: it is termed the Key colour is because it is key to determining the outcome of an image. Black ink provides depth and shades to images, providing a foundation for all other colours to create the desired effect, depending on how they are mixed. If cyan or yellow are overlaid, for example, green will be created because cyan and yellow have combined.
The CMYK process is known as a subtractive process. We start with the white background, and layer colours in varying intensities to achieve the exact colour desired. All the ink added helps to reduce the brightness of the colour, so when all are mixed together, they form pure black.
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Spot colors are pre-mixed colours that are applied directly, rather than being formed from a series of dots that combine to produce the correct colour. An example of spot colour use can be the specific colour used in a company logo. This process can be used to create a unique image.
File format
When designing logos, we normally work in the full range of file formats to ensure you have maximum flexibility for using your marketing material for any purpose.
• JPGs are an ideal format for RGB files, with a balance between file size and quality. They can be read almost anywhere.
• PSD – the native file format for Adobe Photoshop. Standard source file for RGB.
• PNGs can create transparent backgrounds with better quality, which are better for graphics like buttons, icons, and banners.
• GIFs – motion images. Perfect for animations in RGB.
• PDFs – ideal for CMYK files. Compatible with most programs.
• AI – standard source file for CMYK. Native file format for Adobe Illustrator.
• EPS – this file format is the alternative to AI when designing in RGB. It is compatible with other vector programs and is less expensive than AI formats.
Perfect detail ensures a great result
Part of our design process is to ensure your final files are perfect down to the detail of each pixel. This ensures your documents are accurate, and that the printing process will result in the best quality result, first time, every time.
There are a number of tools to help ensure documents are free from errors. Below is a selection:
Ghent Output Suite
Ghent Output Suite was created for professionals who need to test PDF files. One of the tests includes a series of patches that show whether or not the file passed or failed in a graphic art production workflow.
A PDF file’s transparency can be checked for errors by inputting a test patch, which will check for the rendering of artwork effects like transparency, CMYK, RGB and spot colors, font quality and overprinting.
Fogra color matching
Fogra is an AI check for accuracy and consistency of colors in printed materials.
Colour separation plates
CMYK ‘plates’ allow users to determine how colours will interact during the printing process. Graphic desingers and printers use these to detect potential issues and fix them before the print.
We understand the importance of colour as a design and communication tool. We always work carefully with our clients to ensure all colour is optimised for your brand, and your customer appeal. Finally, we ensure that all technical aspects of colour output are correct to ensure your finished product is perfect.