Your brand's color palette is a core element of the visual personality you communicate to your audience. Are you friendly and energetic? Cool, calm and collected? These are the types of qualities that people will remember about your organization as a result of your color palette.As important as color is, we've seen a lot of the ways that a color palette can be mistreated over the years. Your colors aren't able to build and maintain that familiar visual identity you want to have if they slowly change or lose consistency. Here are some ways you can keep your eye on the pitfalls many nonprofit face when it comes to caring for color.Maintain Consistent Color Values for WebIt is true that your colors will look slightly different from screen to screen due to monitor quality, age, and brightness. That is something you can't control, but you can make sure the colors are going to appear as close as possible to your print materials in order to create a coherent identity.Some people hastily choose color values used on a website based on memory or eyeballing when really you should be using design software to choose a hexadecimal color number which matches the colors you use in print. Even a slight variation of a color being darker or more blue can feel off to people in a way they can't quite pinpoint. That uneasiness becomes associated with your brand rather than all the positive values you want to convey.Learn How Color Works in PrintHow print production methods affect color is an important concept to understand in order to protect your visual identity. There are two main printing methods, digital and offset, and each method has a different impact on color. For digital printing the color is naturally going to vary from machine to machine. In order to create more consistency in your materials, you can offer samples of existing printed pieces to a vendor so they can calibrate the print job to match as closely as possible.For offset printing, you have the option to use Pantone inks. These are valuable because Pantone inks are carefully engineered to be universally consistent from batch to batch. Carefully trained professionals review all the inks to make sure there are no variations, so you know once you've selected a Pantone ink for your brand that is going to stay true over time. If you don't have Pantone ink numbers selected for your brand colors it is a good idea to have a design professional help you identify some good matches so you'll be prepared when you need to print an offset job. Take Expanding Your Palette Very SeriouslyFrom time to time a design project may test your color palette in a such a way that you want to expand your colors to give you more options. There are certainly occasions when this may be appropriate to refresh your brand or move it forward, but always make sure your brand values are kept in mind when making changes to the colors. For example, if you want to add a bright color because you think your brochure isn't feeling fun enough, return to your brand values to make sure you aren't trying to head in a new direction that goes outside your current reputation.In addition to being well thought out, a color palette expansion should be a collaborative effort. No one member of the team should take it upon her or herself to make a decision of that magnitude when putting together marketing materials for your brand. Make sure all the leadership gets together to have a conversation about the value of make a change before it's too late.If you want to have a conversation about how your color palette is or isn't working well for you brand, get in touch with our branding experts.
