It is important for any business to have a consistent theme in all their marketing materials to help establish a business brand which is unique against the competition with the aim to attract and retain loyal customers. Colour is very important in branding as it is the predominate element of association and identification to a brand.

If we take major shopping brands in the UK, Tesco uses a red for their font with a blue dashed bar underneath. Morrisons use a dark green colour for their font with yellow leaves growing from the dotted i. ASDA use a light green for their font. Lastly, Sainsbury’s use orange for their logo. All these brands stick to these colours and consistently use them across their marketing materials such as letterheads, websites, promotional posters, etc.

Colours convey emotions and feelings. There is a whole branch of psychology (colour psychology) that studies colours and the effects it has on human behaviour. Listed below is a short overview of colours and their significance in colour psychology.

• Red – Youthful, bold, passion
• Blue – Strength, trust, reliable
• Yellow – Optimism, cheerful, warmth
• Green – Tranquility, growth, health
• Orange – Confidence, friendly, enthusiasm
• Pink – Innocence, soft, feminine
• Purple – Royalty, spirituality, sophistication
• Brown – Earthiness, subtle richness
• White – Purity, truthfulness, refined
• Black – Sombre, distinctive, serious
• Grey – Balance, calm, premium

When choosing a colour or colours, it is important to take the psychology of colours into account and try to choose a colour that conveys the story of your business rather than settle on a personal favourite colour. Beyond the colour psychology aspects, it is also important to make sure you choose colours that compliment each other. Luckily for those that have little knowledge regarding colour and design, there is many free resources to help you choose a colour palette for your branding.

1. Colormind

Allows you to set your own colours(up to 5 colours) and see how this is applied on a demo page so that you can refine your choices further until you find a suitable colour palette for your brand. One of our favourite aspects of Colormind is that it uses Deep Learning processes to generate colour schemes and can extract colour schemes from uploaded images.

Visit site: http://colormind.io

2. ColorSpace

ColorSpace is currently in Beta stage but allows you to select an initial colour. After you select a colour it will generate a variety of colour palettes from spot palettes to gradient palettes.

Visit site: https://mycolor.space

3. Color Hunt

Color Hunt doesn’t allow you to generate colours, instead it has a very large library of palettes that you can browse through for inspiration. Once you have found a colour palette you like, you can download the palette as a PNG file which you can share with your designer.

Visit site: https://colorhunt.co

4. Coolors

Coolors allows you to generate colour palettes with the click of a button or the pressing of the spacebar. Once you have generated a colour palette you would like for your brand, you can export the palette in various file formats including PDF, PNG and SVG. If none of the generated colours are to your liking, you can also browse a large library of palettes generated by other users to find your perfect colour scheme.

Visit site: https://coolors.co

Do you have a favourite colour generator? Why not share with us in the comments below.