As small businesses, we often end up wearing quite a few hats. We are our own research team, our own legal team (sometimes), our own support ticket team, our own production and shipping team, and even our own design team. Artists especially have to wear these hats and learn a lot more than the average business person may need to know. As such, learning the unspoken rules of creating visual content can be a pretty daunting task.

What is color theory?

Color theory refers primarily to the categorizing and mixing of colors to achieve specific visual effects. In painting or digital art, this can include how cool and warm light effects the colors in the work. In graphic design, however, it is most important to focus on visual aesthetics.

What four things should you keep in mind?

When creating digital content for a brand of any kind, you will need to keep several factors in mind to appear professional. Here are a few of the most important ones:

1) Consistency.

Users, clients, customers, even family and friends all want to see consistent branding, products, and content. Furthermore, algorithms want to see consistent content.

Remember : All elements should be consistent throughout every piece of content because that is how someone identifies your business, making it the most important part of the overall marketing strategy. If you use three different logos all with different colors for the same service, customers will get confused as to who they're supporting. If your logo colors are soft pink and orange, don't curate black and blue content for your Instagram page. Our brains are wired to notice patterns and recognize things based on those patterns and you want people to think of your brand when they see the colors you use.

2) Product.

Colors are heavily associated with different products, take financial apps for instance.

Notice that they are all green because people associate the color green with money. Let's look at some technology logos.

These logos are similar because technology, circuit boards, electricity, etc. are all typically associated with icy greys and blues. When working on your logo, it is important for you to compare your design with other designs in the same industry. Even if you want to be different you still need to be comparing your work to the work of others.

3) Audience.

This one is fairly simple. If your market is toddlers, use primary colors. If they're youth, add in secondary and tertiary colors, for teens consider adding neon or pastels, and for adults stick with neutral shades - the world is hectic enough, at least our marketing colors can be calm for them!

4) Platform.

Much like audience, the platform you are using can heavily influence what colors you should use. If your main platform is Instagram, default to the colors associated with your audience. If your platform is TikTok, use saturated colors and high contrast. If your platform is Facebook, use light blues, navy, and greyscale for the bulk of the marketing efforts.

How do I implement this knowledge in my branding?

I am so glad you asked! If you're looking around for some programs to make content for social media, posters, book covers, t-shirt designs, website designs, promotional videos, etc. Canva is an amazing platform. Not only do I use it for all of my promotional material, but this website was built using many elements I assembled on Canva. There is a free plan with thousands of options, so you really never need to buy the pro version. Even still, I absolutely recommend the pro version because I use it so often that it makes it worth it to have full access to all of the elements they offer! The link below will take you directly to the site where you can sign up for a free trial before deciding whether or not it is the platform for you. Give it a shot!

Thank you for reading!

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