The Blog Studio

Colour selection is a key element when building a strong brand. At The Blog Studio, colour selection has always been an element that clients seem to struggle most with. Some clients overlook the importance of colour in branding their product or service, while others are unable to decide on a colour that best reflects the brand.

Choosing the right colour is worth the time and effort. It has been
reported by current marketing research that approximately 80% of
what we assimilate through the senses is visual.


More than Personal Preference I often hear clients say, “I don’t like red. I don’t like green. I don’t want it to be blue, but I love pink.” These comments are based on personal preference. It is important that an individual like the branding and design of their product and website. It is equally important to think of what emotions are evoked by the end-user in response to your colour selection.


Colour can be a tricky topic to negotiate.You have to step into your
clients’ shoes, and ask how they perceive the colour choices for a particular
project. Do they have the same positive emotional response you have?
Examine your colour design choices from every possible angle, including
aesthethics, and the geography of your audience.
Color choices may signify one thing in the West, and have a different, or
wholly opposite meaning in the East. The best colour selection combines
personal preference with public perception.


Emotions Associated with Colours
Colors, like smells and sounds, conjure an immediate emotional reaction in people. As a designer, it is necessary to know the emotions that are associated with the
different colours. To denote calm, excitement, or complexity to your clients, thought
must go into choosing the right color. You need to figure out how people respond to colours used in a specific design capacity. You must choose colors that will bring
maximum emotional impact, while appearing attractive.


Consider how your clients will respond to colour choices. Part of this is knowing
which colours evoke emotions that represent your brand and industry. A company within a conservative industry may not want to use loud colours, because they lack the needed gravity. Then again, a company could purposefully use an unexpected colour to distinguish itself from the competition, but it must be a carefully considered choice.


Colour selections can complement one another, or contrast one another. There are strategic uses for each case. Colours that complement each other are more appealing to the eye. Colours that contrast each other can help items stand
out. Decide which is a better fit for your project right in the beginning. It will
make selecting the correct palate much simpler.


Usability
You may have created the most gorgeous site or logo, with an exquisite pallette,
but if no one can read it, it’s an automatic failure. Colours play a practical role in how people receive information. As most people realize, black on white is the easiest to read, on paper and on computer screens. The most legible of all
colour combinations are black on yellow, green on white, and red on white.

Here are some simple guidelines to help you choose the right colors for nearly any project.


Tips on Choosing Colours for Emotional Impact

• Of the primary colours, blue is considered the most calming and suppresses appetite. Red is said to increase blood pressure and heartbeat, while yellow evokes cheerfulness. Children tend to prefer primary colours.
• Nonprimary colours are more calming than primary colours. Pink is said to enhance appetite, while black (like blue) suppresses appetite.
• Colour shade also matters when trying to evoke different emotions. Green gives the feeling of nature, calmness, and freshness, but certain shades can also give the feeling of envy and
possessiveness. Black can be gloomy and scary, but can also be elegant and sleek. Red can be associated with the joy of Christmas, but also with blood.
• Colour can help determine the worth of an item, so choose thoughtfully. Forest green and burgundy appeal to the wealthiest 3% of Americans and often raises the perceived price of an item.
Conversely, orange is often used to make an expensive item seem less expensive.
• Too many colours can make things busy and chaotic, which generally will make a website less user-friendly.

The guy starts working at The Blog Studio, and suddenly he’s blogging again. Good to see we’re a positive influence. Check it out.

Early this year, we helped to launch Primetime Politics. Using a couple of honest-to-god-human political experts, Primetime looked at the best political content on the web each day, and categorized, re-factored, and compared the stories, giving the reader an unbiased, well rounded view of the world. The site was a hit from the get go, quickly growing to 1000s of page views a day.

The original design was clean, crisp and elegant. 

A few months ago though, our clients and I started to talk about redesigning the site. Based on what we knew before we launched the site, we thought clean, crisp and elegant was the ideal look and feel for Primetime Politics. In many senses, it was too. But somewhere along the way, the business plan changed from trying to be a general purpose political news site to a site that focusses more on the experts behind the scenes. Jordan and Assaf, the site owners, are way too smart, way to well spoken, and way too good looking to hiding behind the keyboard!

In addition to featuring the site owners more prominently, Jordan and Assaf wanted to inject a bit more humour, and a lot more partisanship into the content. The elegant design of the site didn’t support either the jokiness or the partisanship. We also wanted to appeal to a younger audience. There are about a billion stuffy right-wing sites out there, but very few conservative sites talk to young voters. We saw this as a serious opportunity. Plus we wanted to roll out a new tagline: Young, Right & Right

So, with the goal of making the site more approachable to a younger audience, more suitable to sarcasm and humour, and more of a showcase for Jordan and Assaf, I pulled out my big box of crayons and got to work.

Because I’m as familiar as I am with the site and the concept, I jumped straight into wireframes.

The layout of the old site was already pretty solid. The biggest change was dropping the featured debate box that had previously occupied the top of the page, and the addition of the larger blog graphics on the left sidebar. Overall, we reduced the number of items on the page dramatically.

Looking back at the original site, there were two things that lent it it’s sober feel: the typography and the colour palette. While I kept the overall blues from the original design, I turned up the saturation and added the contrasting orange to make both colours really pop.

I used the wonderful Archer font for the header and tagline. This font has just the right amount of whimsey.

Keeping with the whimsey factor, I set the tagline outside the box. Everything else on the site sits nicely on a grid line, so this “outside the box” thinking really draws the eye.

The body font is set in Arial, with section headers set in Georgia. I really like this combo for it’s clean lines and readability. Again, note how the colours keep things lively.

That’s it for my first design dissection post. I hope to do many more in the coming weeks as we get ready for our own new site unveiling!

Most of the work we do is business-related. It’s not often we get the chance to really get wild and totally creative. So when Robin approached us a few months ago about redesigning her personal site, we jumped at the chance.

The site is filled with fun details, from the post footers:

to the date container:

to the bee that follows you as you hover over the links:

I just want to say thanks very much to Robin for letting us have so much fun!

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I’ve just redesigned, my personal blog almost cool. Rather than try to find the time to come up with insight or original thought, I’ve started to quickly post shiny things that catch my ears and eyes. I think the content has improved ;)