Exploring Colour
Research & Colour Theory
Before I decided on what colour palette I want to use for my personal brand I want to consider a few things like colour theory, what my personal brand is about and how I want to be perceived by my audience. I really want to show my own personality as much as possible throughout my personal brand either drawing inspiration from either my fashion style or my favourite colour, I want to consider the fact that my personal brand is something I will be developing throughout the rest of my design career so I need to create something that is easy to develop and expand when the time comes. After thinking about how I want my brand to be perceived I came to the conclusion that I want to be recognised as a professional within the areas of expertise I work in, I also want my brands identity to be minimalistic and simplistic, although I want to include my own personality as much as possible I want to place simplicity, minimalism and professionalism before anything else.
Considering Colour Theory
When I consider minimalism the first colour that comes to mind is white, the image of a clean white wall or a minimalistic interior design that are all over Pinterest. When I think of the colour white I think of a blank canvas or a clean slate which is a good representation of the start of my personal brand and my design career. In some cultures the colour white is considered as a symbol of life or rebirth which would fit the symbolic references of the start of my design journey but in other cultures it means the exact opposite, although I shouldn’t get too strung up on this as its impossible to please everyone I still need to consider how colour is perceived in cultures around the world as I aim to take my personal brand global.
When I thought of a colour to pair with white the first colour that came to mind was black, this seemed like the logical option as it has the highest contrast ratio between the two colours. Considering my fashion sense I always seem to be attracted to black or grey clothing which would show my personality in some form in terms of my fashion and they way I dress myself everyday. Just like the colour white, black can have various meanings depending on certain countries and cultures, the colour black is often associated with death in western cultures but is perceived as the opposite in eastern cultures throughout Asia. Black and white is a classic colour combination but it can become extremely boring so I need to consider how I am going to use these colours throughout my brand but still keep things interesting.
As I have previously thought about my personal brand before I was obsessed with using the colour red on a white background – I’m not too sure why the colour red peaked my interest for a portfolio. After thinking about it I think the colour red came to mind from my inspiration on Japonisme design and how the used a splash of colour on neutral tones, the Japanese flag is a simplified idea of what I was going for in a sense with the hint of red on a light background. Considering the colour theory research I completed I know red has multiple meanings depending on the location and culture, in eastern cultures the colour red is often a symbol of re-birth but internationally the colour red is often recognised as aggressive and dangerous – this is something I would have to consider when it comes to my personal brand.
Personal Brand Inspiration
As I want the focus of my personal brand to be on minimalism and simplicity I wanted to draw some inspiration from minimalist designs to see how they used colour, the first thing I noticed upon my research was the majority of them use white as the primary colour in addition to a greyscale colour theme to display the idea of simplicity. Some designers had experimented with dark versions of minimalism where black or dark grey was the primary colour and darkened version of a greyscale palette. I personally love this style of design as I think it looks clean and modern, sometimes the use of generic black and white colours can be boring but I think the introduction of a greyscale palette helps create a sense of depth. Some forms of minimalism don’t always use black and white as they will often feature neutral tones likes beige tones and light pastel colours to introduce a small amount of colour, I like this style of design but I think the idea of using greyscale colours will fit my personal brand a lot better.
I have included some minimalist inspiration below to demonstrate their use of colour:
I love brutalist design and their use of vibrant, dramatic colours. There are a couple of different styles of brutalism in my opinion, the first being the style of brutalism that uses bright colours and geometrics shapes with influences of typography and grid systems from the Bauhaus and Swiss Design movements. The second is the more street style brutalism where they have more influences from deconstructivism, this style of brutalism can be seen in brands like Vans and Off-White which are two brands I heavily support. I love the use of colour in brutalist designs but I personally feel like it would take away from the idea of minimalism and simplicity if I used too many colours, I love the use of vibrants colours throughout brutalism which could be an inspiration for the colour I choose for my brand but I don’t think I will use as many colours throughout my personal brand. I noticed a version of brutalism and minimalism where there where hints of colour which gave me an idea of have those splashes of colour as the projects but keeping the rest of the brand neutral, this idea would work well with my idea of minimalism and simplicity as the brand will have a minimalist colour palette but elements of brutalism can be seen throughout my work.
I have included some brutalist design inspiration below to demonstrate their use of colour:
I have always be a fan of the way colour way used throughout the japonisme design period, I love how they use light, neutral tones from the background with splashes of vibrant red and pinks tones. This style of design has influenced my colour choice a handful of times before and is something I would like to consider when it comes to deciding on a colour for my brand. Having a touch of pink or red against the idea of a neutral, greyscale colour theme would look great and the user would be drawn to the vibrant colours which would help with the overall design of the user-experience. I want to explore this idea further to see how it would work with the greyscale colour palette idea I have in mind.
I have included some japonisme inspiration below to demonstrate their use of colour:
Exploring Colour
As I want to my brand to be based around minimalism and simplicity I wanted to start my brand with a basic greyscale colour theme. The use of white works with the idea of minimalism and greyscale colour palettes are often seen throughout minimalist designs, the use of black also suits my personality really well as I have a dark sense of humour, I wear black clothes all the time, I’m drawn to greyscale objects and I love clean, minimalistic design so I think the idea of using a greyscale colour palette as the foundation of my personal brand it a good fit. I began by experimenting with a basic greyscale colour palette ranging from 0 – 100 in lightness values to give me an idea on what sort of colours I could use for my personal brand. I have used black as the primary colour for a lot of project in the past and the one thing I have learned is that pure black is extremely harsh on the eyes when displayed on a screen, I like the 90% black colour but I think its a little too light for my taste so I wanted to aim for a happy medium between 90% black and 100% black.
I have included the greyscale palette I used as a reference for my personal brand colours:
Colour Experimentation
When I was exploring ideas for the logo of my personal brand I came up with the idea of using the inner 4 triangle to represent the 4 areas I want to specialise in to help business develop their brand and build their company. This gave me the idea of using four different colours to represent each individual area of expertise, my initial thought was to use the colour palette I had previously used in my Bauhaus project last semester, which featured red, yellow, blue and a cream tone, as I love the colours and they share a lot I common with the principles of colour but I feel like this would draw away from the idea of minimalism. I decided to take some inspiration from some colour palettes that I like to see what colour I could use to work with the greyscale idea I want to go with, after considering the Bauhaus colour palette and realising it may be a bit too much colour I realised that 1 colour might be enough to make my personal brand shine. Drawing inspiration from japonisme I think I would prefer my personal brand accent colour to be some form of vibrant red colour, partly down to the fact that I have been obsessed with this idea before but also because I feel like it represents my energetic personality.
I have included some of the colours I thought about using for my personal brand below:
Initial Colour Palette Idea
After playing around with some colours to see what works I can up with a basic colour palette idea for my personal brand as a reference guide to develop the colour of my personal brand further. I wanted to stick with the idea of minimalism and simplicity so I decided to use a greyscale colour palette as the foundation for my brand, I chose to use the white as the primary colour for my brand and use a lighter grey colour as a secondary colour, the black colour will be used for content purposes and this can be inverted to create a dark theme. Considering my colour experimentation I wanted to choose one colour to use for accents throughout my brand, I knew I wanted to draw inspiration from japonisme and their use of red/pink tones in addition to buratlism and their use of vibrant colours. This gave me some basic criteria for the colour I wanted for my brand… it needed to be some sort of red and it needed to be vibrant! I experimented with some of the colours above but I found that the majority of them were quite flat in comparison with the greyscale colour palette I had chosen, one colour really stood out and added some energy to the palette which worked well with the criteria I had for an accent colour. This colour is almost like a vibrant, burnt orange colour and orange is one of my favourite colours at the moment so I think this is a good fit for my personal brand.
I have included an example of the colour palette idea I have in mind for my personal brand below:
Final Personal Brand Colour Palette
I decided to go with the greyscale colour theme for my brand as I feel like this is a solid representation of the minimalism and simplicity that I want to display throughout my brand. Considering the fact I had used the colour black in previous projects I wanted to learn from this and refrain from using pure black in my brand, I had looked into web safe colours during my studies at Northern Regional College which gave me the idea of including them into my personal brand but in terms of greyscale colours. The darkest black deemed safe for the web is about 93% black which has a much softer appearance when placed with the colour white. I wanted to keep the pure white colour as I feel like this will work well keeping the readability and eligibility of my typography at a maximum but I did want to included a light grey tone as an additional colour to the palette, I took the same idea of using web safe colours and did the same with the colour white to see what was the lightest colour deemed safe for the web other than white.
I thought about introducing a small amount of colour to my personal brand but after my experimentation with accent colours I realised that the colour red and orange is only attracting my attention because its my favourite colour at the moment – the key words are “at the moment”. My favourite colour will change from time to time so I don’t think I should be so decisive on what accent colour I use for my personal brand as it could change by the end of the year, that being said I think just using a greyscale colour palette that works in both light and dark versions will work really well with any vibrant colour in the spectrum and as my favourite colour changes often so could my personal brands accent colour but keeping the greyscale colour palette consistent throughout.
I have included the HEX values for the primary colour palette I chose for my personal brand colours below:
- Charcoal Black – #111111
- Off White – #EEEEEE
- Pure White – #FFFFFF
I wanted to experiment with additional tones that could be used to for design elements throughout my personal brand, I wanted to take the same approach I took with my primary brand colour palette and use web safe colours to create a secondary palette. This was based of my initial greyscale experiment but as the colours black and white where web safe I decided to create 4 grey tones consisting of a dark grey, a medium dark grey, a medium light grey and a light grey, I’m not 100% sure on how these will fit into my brand at the moment as I haven’t designed anything in terms of branding but they will still be useful to have.
I have included the HEX values for the greyscale colour palette I want to use for my personal brand below:
- Dark Grey – #333333
- Medium Dark Grey – #666666
- Medium Light Grey – #999999
- Light Grey – #CCCCCC
I have included an image of my personal brand colours below:
