Just a COLOUR

Does your brand have a colour?

Is that how it gets spotted in a crowd? And recognised?

How about triggering associations?

All good so far?

Let’s call it an asset then.

One more question. Does the colour mean anything to people?

Or is it, you know, just a colour? A Pantone picked at random?

At this point, any designer reading this will be rolling their eyes. I mean, it’s almost rude.

Let’s take my brand colour as an example, because I know the designer, Jeffrey Steventon.

It’s a kind of blue. With a kind of gradient to it, dark to light. I call it ‘discerning blue’, which may be wishful thinking on my behalf.

In the early days of Closer to Brands we didn’t use it. The idea was to be all about the client’s brand, so it should be their logo on the document covers, in big close-up.

The blue came in with the website and then the start of this blog.

So I asked Jeffrey how he came to choose that colour. What does it mean?

His answer was to stop asking stupid questions. The point being it’s silly asking about the meaning of one element of a design, unless the design only has one element.

Design works through a combination of shape, size, font, layout, space, image and context. There are also an infinite number of blues. Light is a spectrum.

I didn’t let him off with that.

So his thinking started with the function. The colour needed to be recessive, so it took second place to the client’s brand, and mid-toned, so it could work with both dark and light type as well as negative space.

The gradient gave it a sense of atmosphere and distance, like you’re looking at a place or context.

I kept nagging.

Maybe there was also something in the choice of a single colour. We’ve worked together a lot and he knows I’ll always turn up with a single-minded brief.

And if we were going to pick one colour, it made sense for it to be cool. Thoughtful.

We then got into a conversation about whether the colour gradient made it look a bit like gazing out at the sea and sky. Neither of us had ever mentioned this before, but that’s how we work together. Jeffrey trusts his instincts and I trust my response.

But now I thought about it, I liked that meaning, particularly the sea part.  I have a strong motivation to dig deeply into both people and brands, in search of the emotional connection.

Jeffrey saw the sky more, maybe because he’s more concerned with getting somewhere, generally an approved design.

So I’m a diver and he’s a swimmer, but the image works for both of us. We agreed whilst disagreeing. No one’s right.

That’s because the truth is everything’s functional and emotional.

Some people are more rational, some more emotional.

And emotion comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, which is why you need a map.

But if you want a design that does more than stand out and tell people it’s you, get yourself a designer.