Bright saturated colour is having a moment right now. While the trend toward intense colour has its roots in social media, it’s spreading everywhere from retail to catwalks and photographic stock libraries. Just a few years ago fashion tended to shape colour trends and everything else followed, but now social media and other areas of design are contributing to and reinforcing trends that filter into our everyday lives.
Designers and brands appreciate colour is a powerful tool for communicating with consumers. It can be used to draw attention and clearly signpost customers old and new in so many ways from the obvious use of red for sales to highlighting and introducing key elements of your business in a coherent manner. Colour is incredibly clever and creates both conscious and unconscious perceptions.
THE colour of 2019
Move over Ultra Violet. Welcome Pantone 16-1546, also known as Living Coral – the shade just announced as the Pantone® Colour of the Year 2019.
As Pantone proudly declares it’s ‘an animating and life-affirming coral hue with a golden undertone that energizes and enlivens with a softer edge.’
Sociable and spirited, this colour has been chosen for its engaging nature, which welcomes and encourages cheerful, carefree activity. A joyful tone that symbolises our need for optimism and embodies our desire for playful expression.
This particular shade of coral is said to be a nurturing colour that appears within our natural surroundings and at the same time, displays a lively presence within social media. To be fair it’s growing on me.
It’s a colour that works well with a palette of greys and teals or with my favourite yellow and a hint of aqua. Then you have the more serious navy blue, which can really pop with a splash of this colour. I love experimenting with shades I may not normally veer towards as they are often the ones that can surprise you, in a good way.
Optimistic shades
Pale tones do feel a little insipid right now and may blur into the background noise as we head boldly into a bright new year. I think it’s because the cold of the winter naturally makes us want to add a dash of something bright to lift us over these months so try to embrace these saturated hues and the joyful, optimistic mood of the current colour palette.
Don’t worry if Living Coral or other bright colours don’t make immediate sense for your brand. Even a small accent or a bright shade in the background could make all the difference.
Introducing colour can help revitalise your brand and is especially useful to highlight core services or attributes as we do for many of our own clients.
Using colour in marketing
In our world colour is essential. Within web design, colour can help signpost services and encourage people to move around. All of which improves the user experience and entices people to spend more time on your site. Using colour within video production for graphics and transitions can help add pace to the story and keep people watching.
As designers we are invariably drawn to objects of colour, whether we realise it or not, and as it’s so subjective it is often the defining element of a brand’s identity.
Colours can convey messages, evoke emotions and add excitement to everyday things. Whether you are promoting a new product for sale, introducing your service to a new market or trying to stand out from your competitors, give some consideration to how you use your existing brand palette or consider bringing in a shade to complement it and give your business a fresh new (and almost free!) look for 2019.
