For well over a decade I’ve left my thumb-print on high-end spaces carefully balancing color, light, scale, and detail in a three dimensional world. What made my clients remain loyal to me? I inspired their home brand and color played a big part. As a matter of fact, it was huge.

Liken to the home, your brand is what others see first. It’s your package. Your online presence speaks volumes, and the colors you’ve selected is the uncommon thread that is mostly glanced over. Selecting colors for your on-line presence is as important as selecting your message. In fact, it’s more important because color is universal.

Here’s what I mean: Take the Coca-Cola brand, red. It’s been around for what seems forever and we can say that Coca-Cola owns the red color category. There’s an emotional aspect attached to the brand. It reads excitement and high energy. There’s also a product information aspect to color. Here’s where I’m going. At the onset of the diet and weight lost fad, Coco-Cola introduced the Diet Coke. So, what did its brand experts do? They had to include a product signifier to distinguish the can from the traditional, excitable, high energy product. The information was shared with its consumers through none other than color, otherwise the consumer could pick-up the original product thinking it was the diet product. The Diet Coke has the signature red brand, but is signified with a combination of silver and white. Silver suggests the product is reliable and intelligent while white added the information of purity and sacred. Dieters loved it!

If you have informational products attached to your brand, it good to think about the emotion behind your packaging, what you want it to convey to your niche market, and the direction your brand should take. Use a palette that is part of the experience or message you want to share. This also applies to your web sites and blogs.

Because of the internet, color is universal. You want your color brand to spark a positive consumer attitude that supports your mission. Black in some cultures designates death, negativity, or something is bad for you. Therefore keep in mind creating a common look and feel that appeals to all cultures. Think outside of the box and use color in a unique way. Each color has personality and your color brand has a loud voice. There should be continuity of your signature color thumb-print on your website, blog, and information products. and in design vernacular, less is more.

1. Engage the process. Don’t merely pick your favorite color or a color palette that your web designer suggests, approach your color brand thoroughly and with acuity. Don’t complicate or settle in the process. Become inspired. You want to own it. Much thought was engineered in the color palette of my site, Designing for the King. Here is a typical example of thinking outside of the box. These colors were manipulated to be a part of the experience which is trustworthiness, peace and dominance.

2. View it from client’s perspective. I’ve visited websites and have seen packaging that hollered at me because their was so much of one bold color. See your clients and visitors collectively and individually like young and old, varied disciplines, and inside and outside of your niche.

THIS IS HUGE: HERE’S A COMMENT FROM A VISITOR TO MY BLOG HERE:

“Good points raised here. I am grateful to you for that, however you deserve more thanks than that. I suffer from color blindness (deuteranopia in my case). I mainly use Opera browser (no idea if that changes anything), and a consider a bland a number of web sites
are challenging to comprehend thanks to a careless range of colours used. However, here, as the range of colors is good, the design is extremely tidy and pleasant to comprehend. I don?t know whether it was a premeditated and conscious undertaking, or just the ?luck of the draw?, but I still thank you.”

3. Beware of influence. Your color brand should inspire visually. Given, not all people like all colors. But the influence is in how the colors are packaged. How can your colors inspire your niche market?

It is not enough to have a color brand, say red (I’m using this because it’s a common color). Explore color palettes, be deliberate in your color message, listen to your design within, and design it in a way that you own it.

Thank you for reading this post. I enjoy sharing my passion with you and also enjoy reading your comments.

Sharing my Passion,

Deana

©2010 Deana Murphy. All rights Reserved. You may reprint this article
in its entirety with author's contact and bio information.
Deana Murphy is The Expert on Lifestyle Design, media personality,
a dynamic speaker, an award winning best selling author who has been helping
people for years design a home they love, transform their lifestyle,
and showing them how to feel good from the inside out and unleash their
greatness. She has been interviewed for O at Home Magazine, Empowering Everyday Women,
Spectacular Homes, SORMAG, and Meredith publications to name a few.