Colour Psychology

These bright, crisp days are just what we needed aren’t they?

There’s a lot happening at Flourish at the moment which we’re all finding incredibly inspiring. Team promotions, new designers, some very exciting client projects, the launch of the branding masterclass, oh, and the small matter of a nip tuck to the Flourish brand identity (which I’ll share with you soon). Because of all this bright, new stuff, I’m feeling very fired up, very creative and very excited about the future.

I think this lovely, yellow mood board just about sums up our mood right now. Optimistic and inspired. How are you feeling right now?

Recently I’ve been spending 10 minutes at the start of every day on Pinterest. It’s a tip I picked up from Elizabeth Cairns when we were recording a video for the Branding Masterclass; Elizabeth encouraged us to spend time getting into our flow at the start of the working day: doing things that inspire us. For some of you that may be being relaxed, others may like to organise, spend time outside or exercising. For me it’s about being creative. And I’m finding Pinterest the perfect inspiration tool – as long as I limit myself to 10 minutes a day.

What do you do to get into your flow?

Ps the only downside to Pinterest is that it’s incredibly difficult to track back the image sources. None of the above are my images (apart from the colour palette) all via my Spring Optimism Pinterest board

Tagged as in Colour Psychology, Inspirations

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged my inspirations. And whilst I’m much more inspired by Autumn and Spring than I am Summer, the fact is that I just didn’t get round to photographing as much as I would have liked over the last few months. I suspect that my lack of time to photograph still lifes has much more to do with the fact that my life has been turned upside down and inside out with our house renovation than anything else. And whilst the house certainly isn’t finished, I was so inspired by just how beautiful it’s all looking with the light flooding in under the veranda and through our bifold doors that I just had to snip the last of the colour from the garden and put together a hasty still life.

The colours of this late Autumn arrangement look decidedly festive don’t they? So much so that I can’t decide whether it’s late Autumn or early Winter – I’m thinking that with this seasonal palette they can only be Winter.

I never cease to be inspired by what’s going on in the garden. I love flowers and almost always have a bunch or two plonked in vases around the house. There’s something reassuring about their fragile beauty. When the builders cleared their stuff out of the new dining room one of the first things I did was grab a few stems and pop them in a pint glass. Elegant, no, cheering – absolutely. There was something just beautiful about seeing a small spot of beauty in amongst the chaos.

Aren’t these colours just divine? Late Autumn colour verging, very much, on Winter colours. The colours are getting deeper and only the strongest plants will survive the frosts and snow to come.

Tagged as in Colour Psychology, Inspirations

Remember that series I wrote waaaay back in January about Colour Psychology? I wrote a series of posts about the seasonal colour personalities and also about the meanings and effects of colour. Well isn’t blogging just wonderful? You all tweeted it lots for me, you even gave me lots of lovely feedback about it. And then, as I wrote more and more posts those popular colour psychology posts slipped into the archives, only retrievable with a lot of digging.

Since colour psychology is so fundamental to everything that we do, and also to what I tend to post about on the blog, I thought it might be very helpful for you to have a quick reference to the Absolute Essentials of Colour Psychology with all the core detail in one place. And so without further ado, I present to you the series, grouped handily together into one category for your browsing.

You’ll always be able to access from the drop down menu at the top, and very soon Stu will also put a link in from the side. I hope that you enjoy!

Tagged as in Absolute Essentials of Colour Psychology, Colour Psychology

Note: I’m going to get a little bit techy here about colour psychology. Regular blog readers will be familiar with me talking about seasonal colour psychology personalities and the effect they have on the business. If you’re new to the concept of colour psychology you may like to read my Colour Psychology Absolute Essentials posts [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Colour Psychology, Graphic Design, Logo Design

You know we love beautiful colour palettes – palettes that not only look great but that work together and powerfully communicate the message our client wants to. Well today I want to give you a bit of an insight into how we create these palettes. It’s easy to look at these harmonious palettes, all sparkling [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Colour Psychology, Logo Design

Powerful design enables you to connect with your ideal clients. It’ll help you attract, engage and seduce them into buying from you or working with you, and of course, it’s a wider thing than just design. It’s about your powerful design fitting into a powerful brand strategy. Next week I’ll be sharing with you how [...]

Tagged as , powerful branding, powerful design in Branding, Colour Psychology, Graphic Design

In my last post we looked at the heirarchy of design and I introduced the concept of powerful design. The idea that good design just isn’t enough. To truly flourish your design needs to connect with your audience. Now a good part of that comes down to really understanding the brief and the designer having [...]

Tagged as in Branding, Colour Psychology

Last week we sent twenty or so of our most loyal customers a small valentines gift to thank them for their loyalty. I handmade some very lovely bathmelts which we celophane wrapped, tied with a green velvet ribbon and enclosed a small note. In true valentines tradition we deliberately left off the Flourish name and [...]

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

Brown is my black. I love it’s earthy, substantialness and it’s subtle calming effect when used in lighter shades. Brown feels natural, grounded, stable and reliable. There isn’t much that’s flighty or unreliable about brown is there? If used in the right proportion brown can feel balanced (I love to combine it with green or [...]

Tagged as in Absolute Essentials of Colour Psychology, Branding, Colour Psychology

I love orange. It’s a bit of a marmite colour, and when we first explored using orange as a part of the Flourish identity I was pretty resistant. To me orange represented everything that was downmarket and low-frills. Thanks mainly to budget airline Easyjet our view of orange has been tainted in recent years. And [...]

Tagged as in Absolute Essentials of Colour Psychology, Branding, Colour Psychology