Branding your own business: it’s not about what you like, it’s about what’s right for the business (note to self!)

The Flourish logo is taking shape (more on that later…) and having got over the creative block of designing for ourselves we're really throwing ourselves into creating something that a) we love and are proud of and b) (and most importantly) that says the right things about our business and will appeal to our clients.

We're all pretty much in agreement on the concept, the fonts and the execution of the website and business cards, but what we can't get our heads around are the colours.

Take a look…

Rather than go with our gut feel on colours, we've employed our knowledge of colour psychology to select colours that we know say the right things about our business. And that means not just picking the right hues, but also the right tones. I'll come on to why we've picked those specific colours in a minute, but the first thing we needed to do was identify our colour personality: spring, summer, autumn or winter. There's a lot more information on Bernay Laity's website (and I promise one day I will type up my notes on this blog too…).

We've selected colours from the Spring Palette: clear, light and vibrant they reflect our business well. Spring businesses are forward thinking, great communicators, they're visionary and enthusiastic. They are also bubbly, lively, vivacious and spontaneous. Importantly they are also imaginative, effervescent, quick witted, positive and optimistic. Spring represents our business really well and also the reasons that our clients use us. And we deliberately chose the name Flourish because it suggests growth and again fits in well with a spring.

Our problem is that these are colours that we wouldn't necessarily have picked ourselves. I love green, and the acid greens we've chosen sit well with me. In fact, so do the blues and the pink. Orange I have an issue with: but it says creativity, abundance and sociability, so it's a bit of a no brainer for a design company really! But for me it's too light. I would prefer darker colours to give it a bit more gravitas.

And Caroline and Chloe are similar. Whilst I readily identify with the Spring pallete, Chloe and Caroline are probably more Summer inclined. They're organised, efficient and detail focused. They are elegant, understated and keen on quality. They are cool, calm and collected and perfectionists! Summer personalities are also intuitive, perceptive and serious, which are all key attributes of our business: but they're not the most important.

If we'd identified our business from the summer palette we'd be using cooler, muted tones which were more elegant and sophisticated, but wouldn't encompass our approachability and accessibility.

We also all have a bit of the Autumn colour palette in us: passionate, intelligent, independent Autumn colours are warm and intense. Autumn people are great campaigners, they love to learn and they are very energetic and career minded. They're efficient, friendly, enthusiastic and independent. And we all really struggled to decide whether Flourish should be Autumn or Spring. 

Had we selected Autumn, the greens would have been more muted and intense, the orange more fiery (think leaves turning) and the blues more muted and petrol-y. And whilst aesthetically it would be nice to mix Spring with Autumn, you're then heading for a disaster psychologically speaking! By selecting colours from the same palette, we can communicate the positive elements of the colour, if we mix and match the design (and ergo the company) starts to lack integrity and you start bringing out the negative elements of the colour.

So the problem that many clients will be familiar with, is that constant battle to put your own preferences aside and do what's right for the business. Sure, you have to love it, but the orange is so right for the business I have to find a way of incorporating it in a way that I love it. And at the same time resisting the temptation to darken it too far!

What do you think of the palette so far?

Tagged as in Branding, Colour Psychology, Graphic Design, Logo Design, The Flourish Identity, Uncategorized