Appy Pie - How to Choose a Color Palette

How to Make a Color Palette? [Applications of AI Design Tools]


Abhinav Girdhar
By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on February 13th, 2024 12:21 pm | 4-min read

The most important and impactful design element in any project remains the color or the color palette that you choose to work with. However, not everyone is blessed with the knack for making a color palette that would work best for the project. Whether you are making a poster, creating a landing page design, or designing an invitation card, making the color palette is the most crucial aspect of the entire process. In the absence of the much-desired creative abilities, most businesses and entrepreneurs are resorting to AI design tools to create a color palette that will work best for you.


Introduction

Before you start any design project, you must ask yourself one important question - what's my color palette? The most sensitive and primal human sense is that of sight. Hence, while creating a color palette, it is important that you know how to mix colors together and make a color palette that will be perfect for your product, brand image, and target audience. Appy Pie - How to Choose a Color PaletteChoosing a color scheme/palette is more difficult than most people assume. In addition, a good color palette is very important for any design project. An improper color palette makes it difficult for your customers to associate with you. Your color palette needs to perform many tasks. It needs to catch the eye of people on the Internet, be pleasant to look at, represent your business, help in branding and determine the colors your business will use for its entire life cycle. Read on to find out how you can create your business’ color palette.Click on the link if you want to learn the basics of color theory.

Color Associations and Your Brand

Since you know what color theory is, we will now move on to the next part of designing palettes. Color association is a part of color psychology. Research has shown that we tend to associate colors with moods/personality traits. To attract the perfect audience, you need to choose a color that they will associate with. Here are some common colors and the common influence they generate on people:
  1. Yellow – lightheartedness, caution, curiosity, joy, instability, warmth.
  2. Blue – authority, calmness, dignity, serenity
  3. Green – freshness, harmony, health, healing
  4. Purple – Royalty, mystery, sophistication
  5. Red – aggression, danger, passion, drive
The colors that you will associate with your brand will depend on the audience you’re trying to attract. For example, if your business is a men’s clothing line blue and red will suit your palette very well.

The ‘Hexa-Color’ wheel and Common Business Colors

Business and brand colors should try and emulate a six-color palette or what I like to call it, the hexa-color wheel. Out of these six colors, there are two dominant colors and 4 other colors meant to accent the 2. These 4 can be simple color mixes, shades, tints, tones and so on and so forth. For a business, it is better to stick to predictable color combinations and use either analogous, complementary or monochromatic color schemes. Monochromatic palettes are great and provide subtlety and softness. However, they can appear washed out and lack contrast.Appy Pie - How to Choose a Color PaletteComplementary colors are an almost perfect balance of two strong colors and include both warm and cool colors making them catchy. A well-done complementary color palette is also very flexible.Appy Pie - How to Choose a Color PaletteAnalogous colors are pleasing to look at and make for a relaxing color scheme. They help achieve a homogenous balance found in monochromatic palettes and the contrast of the complementary. One key complain of analogous colors is that it can get really overwhelming and each dominant color in analogous can end up creating a bad visual design. In simple words, analogous colors can be too ‘busy’.Appy Pie - How to Choose a Color PaletteCommonly speaking, businesses take a dominant color and create a palette by mixing it with white. For online businesses, blue is often the dominant color alongside white.The blue and white palette is of the most common color palettes out there. Popular social media and software companies use a blue and white color palette. Good examples include Facebook, Linkedin, Salesforce, Twitter, Wordpress etc.White is –the most accepted among businesses and is almost always the second dominant color for most brands.

Use of AI in Design Projects

Artificial intelligence or AI has become an integral part of the digital world and the world of design is no exception. AI design tools have opened up the digital design world for everyone, irrespective of their skills or knowledge of any specific design software. Hence, if you are planning to create a poster for your next virtual event, you can look at AI Poster Makers to do all the tough tasks for you, while you only need to enter a detailed text prompt about your concept. If you do not find this example relatable, think of a scenario where you are hosting a small housewarming party, or are responsible for hosting a professional webinar, how will you invite the right people? Let’s make it even more realistic, the event is this weekend, and you have neither the time nor budget to hire a designer to design an invitation. What would you do? Simple, take a deep breath and choose Appy Pie’s AI Invitation Card Maker to create a unique invitation card. That is how AI can help you with your design projects while saving you money and time.

How to Create Your Color Palette?

If you are planning to build a color palette for your next big design project and don’t know where to begin, here is a quick tip for you. Find an image that you love, particularly the way the colors are used and distributed through it. This image can act as your color palette and you can use an image color picker to create a color palette for your project. Now, let’s take a look at the detailed process of creating a color palette for any design project.

Step 1: Decide the dominant colors

Creating your own color wheel begins with choosing the dominant colors. If your business is mainly online, choosing white as one of the dominant colors can be a very good option. On screens, white is very bright and makes it easy to read and interact with a webpage andit is also soothing to look at. If you choose some other color as dominant, make sure that whenever it is used online, using a tint of the color is a good idea. The second dominant color is based on your brand and what message you’re trying to convey. If you’re creating an analogous color palette, remember that all colors can count as dominant which is why they are hard to balance.

Step 2: Add accenting colors

Once you’re set on the dominant colors, it is time to start deciding on the colors to support them. For the accenting colors, use tints, tones and shades of a hue to full effect. If your dominant colors have high contrast, the accenting colors must be washed down versions of them. Both tints and tones serve this purpose to a certain degree. Tints and tones of your main hues are recommended when you’re using analogous and complementary color palettes. Monochromatic colors require stronger accenting colors and shades of its main color are a great way to bring ‘life’ to them. Try and make sure that you include both light and dark hues of your dominant colors.

Step 3: Create the ‘hexacolor’ wheel

Create a color wheel of your final colors. Try and make sure you do not use more than six colors in your palette.. If the color wheel shows a gradual and pleasing progression from color to color, you can be sure that your palette has worked out perfectly.

Mistakes to Avoid While Creating a Color Palette

Your first color palette will never be perfect. However, as a rule of thumb, I would suggest creating multiple palettes and testing them out before settling on one. Here’s some more to make sure your color palette is great.
  1. Never use shades as backgrounds. Lighter colors in the back are always better. There’s a reason why the second dominant color is usually white.

  2. Too much contrast is unpleasant on the eyes. Never use dominant colors together on a big screen. Since both colors are likely warm, they will be uneasy on viewer’s eyes and that may hurt your brand reputation.

  3. Blue and White is too common a color scheme. It will not help you stand out and may make your brand ‘boring’ for viewers.

Conclusion

Creating a compelling and effective color palette for your business is a crucial step in building a strong brand identity. The colors you choose can convey your brand's personality, values, and message to your target audience. By following the steps outlined in this blog, from understanding color psychology to selecting the right color combinations, you can create color palettes that resonate with your customers and set you apart from the competition. Remember that consistency is key. Once you've established your color palette, use it consistently across all your branding materials, from your logo to your website, social media, and marketing collateral. This consistency not only strengthens your brand identity but also helps customers recognize and remember your business. Additionally, periodically reviewing and updating your color palette can keep your brand relevant and adaptable to changing trends and customer preferences. As your business evolves, your color choices should evolve with it. Ultimately, a well-crafted color palette can be a powerful tool in building and maintaining a strong and memorable brand. So, take the time to explore the psychology of color, experiment with combinations, and make strategic choices to create a color palette that not only looks good but also serves as an essential element in your brand's success.

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Abhinav Girdhar

Founder and CEO of Appy Pie