How To Choose Colors And Fonts For Your Design/Brand (2024)

The aesthetics of a design is an integral part of your business image. It is, after all, what people see when looking at your website, social media, and anything else associated with your business.

Your audience can judge your company, product, or service in just a few seconds. Most of that judgment is based on color alone.

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You can influence what your audience feels and sees with the typography and different colors you use. Colors are essential in marketing, and it’s about color palettes, emotions, complementary colors, and more. Any good color palette you incorporate into your aesthetics will change how your audience feels about you. Nailing the color and typography you use is essential, and we’ll look at how you can do that in this article.

WHY COLORS AND FONTS ARE IMPORTANT?

Your design can affect user experience and your brand identity. It gives your branding a specific style that can be recognized by your audience no matter where it’s used. It should complement your company emblem and the structure of your Brand. It would be best to create websites and designs tailored to your audience type, so don’t forget to put yourself in their shoes. If you use it right, your website and business can stand out from the competition and gain better brand recognition. Fonts and typefaces are part of typography, and they can affect people’s moods. Some fonts are whimsical and fun, while others are more serious or sophisticated.

WHY ARE COLORS IMPORTANT?

Color plays a vitally important role in the world in which we live. Color can sway thinking, change actions, and cause reactions. It can irritate or soothe your eyes, raise your blood pressure or suppress your appetite. When used in the right ways, color can even save on energy consumption.

Effects on Emotions:

When we’re exposed to a particular color, it can evoke an emotional response in us.

For example, bubblegum pink has been found to have a relaxing effect on people. So much so that some sports teams have been rumored to paint their visitor locker rooms in this soothing palette in hopes of messing with their opponents’ psyches.

So, give some thought to the feelings that you want your brand to emote from the public. We have listed some emotions generally associated with each primary color. Keep in mind that the specific opacity and tone will affect emotions differently. So while bubblegum pink calms, hot pink tends to excite. The lower the opacity the more soothing the color becomes.

Colors And Emotions:

PINK : Feminine, youth, romance, sweet.

RED : Passion, aggression, violence, adventure.

ORANGE : Excitement, inexpensive, youth, autumn.

YELLOW : Happy, friendly, cautious.

GREEN : Natural, prosperity, money, stability.

BLUE : Tranquil, trustworthy, professional, authoritative.

PURPLE : Royal, luxurious, romantic, creative.

BROWN : Dependable, natural, simple, sturdy.

BLACK : Authoritative, strong, refined, mysterious.

The popularity of each color varies from year to year. Thus, it’s important to pick one that appears current to your audience. Since colors used in branding a company don’t typically match the colors used in fashion, it’s important to consult trends that are appropriate. Companies have been built on predicting which colors will be popular each year.

Branding usually identifies a family of colors that may be used depending on the circ*mstances.

Two colors might potentially be selected for the brand logo. Two other colors may be optioned for use in collateral or supporting art. All these colors need to play well together.

WHY ARE FONTS IMPORTANT?

See Also

The graphic designer's guide to mastering colorTop 40 Must-Have Fonts For Graphics DesignersHow to Use Color Fonts on the Web | Envato Tuts+Top 12 Websites to Find Free Fonts for Designers [2023]

Fonts are universally used by writers and designers on both digital and paper formats to show different actions, situations, speech, emotions, and emphasis. It is especially helpful for the viewer when they are looking at anything.

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There are probably just as many fonts as colors. Fortunately, many of these can be found on organized and user-friendly websites. Since your color brainstorm already revealed the top emotions inherent in your brand, perform a search based on those results. You can also perform a search based upon your industry or subject matter.

Here are some top websites to help you get the right response out of your brand’s font.

Once you make a design, you may not want to have to redesign it every couple years. So, consider a classic, tried-and-true font.

Some fonts have endured decades without too many signs of aging. For example, the typeface Helvetica has been around since 1957. Yet, it continues to be one of the most popular and classic fonts available.

HOW TO CHOOSE COLOR FOR YOUR DESIGN/ BRAND?

There are several factors that must be considered when trying to pick the right color for your brand. These include, Emotional Response, the Trends, Industry Standards, and Combinations.

But before choosing the right color for our design we have to understand color terminology.

So, lets take a short brief on color terminology.

COLOR TERMINOLOGY:

The Color Wheel: This is a visual representation of color hues arranged by the chromatic relationship between them. You’ll find that a good color wheel always shows 12 hues.

Warm and Cool Colors: The color wheel is divided into warm and cool colors. Red, yellow, and orange are warm colors because we associate them with warmth. Green, blue, and purple are cooler because we associate these colors with things like water and grass.

Hue: Hue is often used in color to mean the same thing, but it’s more specific than that. Color can refer to tint, shade, hue, or tone. Hue refers to the pure primary colors on the color wheel, the ‘dominant color family,’ and is particular. Red, blue, yellow, etc., are all hues. Note that we don’t refer to white, grey, or black as hues.

Value: The value of a color is how light (tint) or dark (shade) it is.

Chroma: Chroma, also known as saturation, is how intense a color is.

Tint, Shade, Tone: These three are all part of how we can change and adjust the appearance of colors. You can make them darker or more intense by adding white or black to the primary color.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT COLOR

1. EMOTIONAL RESPONSE

You always hear about how first impressions last. This is true when it comes to colors so you might want to think really hard before picking one. Colors draw out emotions and feelings. According to a study, up to 90% of customers are able to make an initial impression just by looking at brand colors. In short, they are powerful in making the customers decide whether to engage or not with your brand. Understanding what colors mean is the first step in choosing the perfect color scheme.

Psychologists have spent many years just to learn about the feelings that are invoked by colors. You might want to make use of their research findings in figuring out which colors will work best in translating your brand message.

2. COLOR PALETTES

Color schemes are the colors that you use in your designs. They are also called color palettes and will be made up of all the colors used to make your design and brand relevant.

Your color scheme must take into consideration your font and font colors, so they don’t clash.

Typically, you will have one or two dominant colors in your chosen scheme.

They are the colors chosen to attract the most attention. You create your moods and bring forth emotions with them.

If you don’t have the time or energy to choose your own color scheme or color palette, you can consider using a color palette generator. You will still get a beautiful and pleasing color scheme without doing too much thinking. There is awesome graphic design software out there, like color palette generators to choose from, all with great features. Adobe Color is an excellent choice and will come up with a complementary color scheme for you.

On the other hand, if you want to reduce your digital dependence and minimize the time you spend on such tools yourself, you can hire a trained graphic designer to do this for you. Color palettes are often used for specific purposes, and complementary colors are put together to get a particular effect.

Similarly, designs and brands dedicated to food won’t use the same color palettes because they don’t require the same emotions and associations.

Think carefully about what your design and brand are all about and build a few color palettes around that. It’s good to have a few options to choose from.

3. INDUSTRY STANDARDS

You must also consider picking colors that are already established to be associated with specific industries. Anything related with technology, for example, uses blue, black, and their variations. Delivery services, on the other hand, favor the brown color. Although it might do good to be different and stand out, incorporating colors from within your industry might stir some familiar feelings in the audience. This would count as the first step to building brand recognition.

4. TRENDS

You might have observed that for the past few years, many industries are waiting about what the next “color of the year”. It is usually determined before the year ends. Products and designs with the new color will start to come out right after the New Year.

Since the trend changes unpredictably, it can be difficult to pick one trendy color for your brand because it might not be cool to have it when the hype is gone. What you can do with trendy colors is to use them for your campaigns. This is very essential if you want to make your brand look updated and fresh every year. Anything related to fashion and styling can benefit the most out of following the color trends.

5. COMBINATIONS

Colors also interact with each other. Putting two colors that complement each other may be enough to make heads turn. You can pick a main color for your brand then match it with other colors to achieve the best combination. You can always refer to the color meanings for guidance so that the meanings do not collide.

HOW TO CHOOSE FONT FOR YOUR DESIGN/ BRAND?

One of the key players in building brand identity is the font. It must come together with your design and colors in order to tell your brand story. In picking the perfect font, it should be unique, legible, works in every platform, and can effectively communicate your brand personality.

But before choosing the right font for our design we have to understand font terminology.

So, lets take a short brief on font terminology.

FONT TERMINOLOGY:

Typography: This is the technique of making written language visually attractive and appealing. Typography can refer to the letters’ size, the way they’re displayed, letter-spacing, and line-spacing.

Typeface: Typeface is sometimes used interchangeably with font, but doing so is incorrect. This term refers to a group of characters with the same design, such as Calibri, Helvetica, Georgia, and Arial.

Font: A font is a part of the typeface you’re using and is in a specific style. For example, Calibri Bold and Helvetica Bold are fonts. Fonts have specific styling elements like width, height, and point size.

Font Family: A font family is a group of fonts that have been designed to be used together. Arial is an example of a font family – it has Arial Regular, Arial Bold, Arial Narrow, Arial Italic, and more to choose from.

Kerning: The horizontal space between two characters is known as the kerning. It is helpful because it lets you set different spaces between the letters of a word if you need to.

Weight: Font weight refers to the thickness of a character’s strokes. Typically, weights are variants of thin, bold, black, or regular.

Point :Point refers to a font’s size and the vertical distance from the top to the letter’s bottom. Note that it’s the size of the whole font and not just one letter.

Tracking: This is also known as letter-spacing. Tracking will adjust spaces for a whole block of text. If you need to change only the spaces between two characters, you’ll adjust the kerning.

Leading: Leading refers to the spacing between lines of type. It affects the readability and visual appeal.

Serif: This is a styling element and refers to a small line added to printed letters’ tops and bottoms in certain typefaces.

Sans Serif: Sans Serif is the opposite of Serif; Sans is French and means ‘without,’ so the typeface doesn’t have the small lines added.

Slab Serif: Related to the already mentioned Serif fonts, this one is thick and more block-like than Serif and Sans Serif.

Script Typeface: These are supposed to look like actual handwriting and add a touch of authenticity to writing.

Blackletter: Also known as Gothic minuscule, Old English, and Gothic script, an ornamental appearance can identify this typeface.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT FONT

1. FONT PSYCHOLOGY

Typography has a complex relationship with emotion. Emotion from any typographic experience is a complex system of the person's prior cultural context, their environment, formal design principles and psychology. Designers navigate this through visual communication.

By changing the style of font, choosing a more emotional font or a powerful font, a designer can make the viewer feel and respond differently towards a brand. A transitional serif font like Baskerville will help readers to feel that the text has more authority and intellect.

Good designers know the value of using a good font. Much thought goes into fonts and the emotions they can make people feel. If you use a font like Times New Roman, different feelings and associations are present than if you use Comic Sans. Examine the fonts you like and try to determine what exactly they make you feel and think. Use your reactions to determine the best font for your business.

2. CATEGORY

Just like colors, you can also base your font choice based on the feelings that they bring about. You can actually make a search on some websites to see which fonts are available for your industry or according to a specific subject matter.

3. HEADINGS

Not many people realize, but their fonts look different when used in headings. When you’re working on your brand tag lines, your headings might look different than the font you chose for your overall written content.

As your headings get smaller, so do your letters, and the words may become difficult to read. Headings play an essential role in your website’s SEO, so you can’t just make your words bigger; they need heading tags.

As such, you can’t always get the same effect with your fonts that you would have without the headings. Always consider how your font will look in the various heading sizes.

4. TIMELESSNESS

A classic font may help establish your branding and will not need a redesign in the next couple of years. You need to consider having one that will still be popular and recognizable across seasons. Helvetica, for example, has endured plenty of years and yet it is still used by many brands today.

Once you make a design, you may not want to have to redesign it every couple years. So, consider a classic, tried-and-true font.

Some fonts have endured decades without too many signs of aging. For example, the typeface Helvetica has been around since 1957. Yet, it continues to be one of the most popular and classic fonts available.

5. FREE AND SAFE FONTS

You can use many free and safe fonts if you’re not too sure how to proceed. Google Fonts has a library with more than 1,000 free fonts to choose from. If you want something bespoke and unique, you may find that you’ll have to buy a font or get someone to design it for you. In most cases, however, you should be able to find a nice free font that you can use.

You should consider using a safe font, even if it means a little less creativity. Most devices your audience uses to visit your website come with fonts pre-installed. If you use a unique font, it might not be compatible with all devices. Fonts that are considered safe include Times New Roman, Georgia, Courier, Arial, Times, Verdana, and Helvetica.

6. COMBINATIONS

Some brands use multiple fonts and this is fine. One font can be used for the logo and other prominent details and another one or two fonts can be chosen for body copy in articles. What you must consider though is that the fonts should not clash with each other. They must complement visually in order to not cause confusion and headaches to the viewer.

TOOLS

Here are few tools you can use to generate and identify which colors and fonts suits your brand best:

Color Palette Generators:

Font Pairing Tools:

Both colors and fonts are key components in increasing brand awareness. They should align with and communicate your brand personality effectively. Failure to do it right could hurt your chances of achieving the full potential of your brand.

Knowing about color psychology helps in learning about how people’s perceptions and behaviors are affected by colors. It would be such an advantage to know which colors will benefit your marketing efforts. Fonts, on the other hand, help create a well-defined brand personality that is identifiable to the audience. Whatever you choose, use the same colors and fonts across all your marketing strategies so that customers easily recognize you.

It’s estimated that color increases brand recognition by 80 percent. The font you choose can be vital for attracting your intended target audience while communicating meaning and tone. When you consider the items above, you will find the right colors and fonts to fit your brand.

Note: All the images used in this article are taken from Pexels.com and are completely free to use.

May this article point you in the right direction upon choosing the color schemes and fonts that will lead your branding efforts to success.

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