Your Brand’s Non-Verbal Logo: The Power of Colour

deamarianastasia
Jul 18
6 min read

Updated: Jul 22

The Power of a First Glance

Think of a famous brand. Now picture it. What do you see?

Chances are, it's not a tagline or mission statement but colours and a visual atmosphere. Before we read a single word, our eyes are already registering colours and forming impressions and moods.

It’s the colours and visuals that get our attention first and form in our minds those crucial first impressions. I’m not saying that copy doesn’t matter and that you should just have a good colour palette and visuals, but colours are the first stop when wheeling in your target audience. …and it can be a hit or miss.

If your colours are not communicating your values and mission, then you need to work harder with your copy in order to convince the audience that you are what they are looking for. And at this point some of them might have already scrolled away due to miscommunication of your colour palette. The perfect brand colours can reinforce your messaging and make it speak louder.

Psychology of Colour

Below are the basics of how we see and sense colours. Of course perception of colours is tied to a lot of different factors, like culture, memories and experience, but there are general trends how we tend to sense them.

Consistency and uniqueness in brand colours = Recognition

Not only does a good colour palette create an efficient first impression but after time and being consistent, people start connecting those colours to your business. At this point the colours have created memories, which make the viewer instantly think of your business when seeing those specific colours. And THAT is a powerful yet simple branding asset to have.

McDonald's road sign with their branding. — Talking about recognisable brand colours. No logo, no business name mentioned and we all know what's on the right.

That is why I recommend using a personalised colour palette and not these certain colours that so many businesses are already using. ...and definitely use more than one colour! For example too many sustainable companies are using these few specific greens, which makes it that people don’t think of your business per se, when seeing the colours again and again, but just sustainability in general.

Sure it’s a spot on colour when it takes most of the viewers’ minds to the value which you want to communicate, but if the colour is too popular it doesn’t really stand out anymore. So basically you need to decide, do you want to communicate with your colours sustainability in general or build a brand personality which people will connect specifically to your business.

For example I'm sure that most of our minds think of Google when seeing this colour combination.

Also when designing your colour palette you should consider how the perception of colours change in time and to what your target audience associates them with. Not sure how common this mindset is, but when I see the green shades that so many sustainable businesses use, my mind actually first considers greenwashing. The reason is that using these basic greens is such a cheap trick to communicate sustainability and you see it everywhere, that it’s often used in a misleading way. If you want to make sure that your brand colours are speaking to the right audience, a test group is an efficient way to analyse their performance.

When it comes to designing your colour palette, the possibilities are endless. So why choose the colours that so many others already use, when you can do things differently and stand out with unique brand colours. Or you can use those popular colours, but mix them with a few other interesting colours and then you’ll have a bit more distinctive palette. Your colours can also be seen as your non-verbal logo, and you don’t want your logo to look like something that is already done 10 000 times.

Here are some unique colour palette suggestions for sustainable companies. The palettes communicate sustainability and nature friendly values without using just the common shades of green and getting lost in the crowd of green businesses.

How to choose the right colours

Like all the decisions regarding your visual brand identity, also the colours should be based on your strategy. This means that you should first think of your target audience, values and positioning in the marketplace. The colours should align with those factors.

Think what message you want your colours to communicate. Is it serious, luxurious, creative, budget, dynamic, edgy, calm… With a good colour palette you can communicate your brand message and atmosphere faster than with just words.

What Happens When Colour is Ignored or Misused

If colours are ignored or misused, you are not connecting with your target audience. Simple as that.

I know I keep on pounding this message, but it’s simply vital in order to create a good brand: your visual identity, which includes the colour palette, should align with your strategy. It’s the only way to have your visuals speaking to the right audience.

Your visuals and colours should communicate your product or service: If your product is something innovative and high-quality, but your visuals communicate dusty and clumsy, it’s hard to convince that your product or service is not aligned with your visuals, because we assume they are. You see? It gets too complicated and it should be more simple: what you see is what you get.

Your visuals and colours should appeal to your audience: If you already have an audience, they should relate and feel connected with your brand and its colours.

A good example of a rebrand and new visuals, which are not aligning with the audience anymore, is the Jaguar’s rebrand. When I saw it the first time in 2024, I was surprised, but thought that it must be all planned and aligned with the future sales and brand strategy. So I was curious to see how it would all play out.

An image showing Jaguar's visual branding before and today.

When rebranding is done wrong, you haven't read your audience right and you might end up losing most of your customers without gaining enough new ones. Unfortunately at the moment Jaguar seems to be exactly in this situation: their April 2025 sales in Europe dropped 97% percent compared to April 2024 (Source: Forbes article). You couldn’t demonstrate any better the power of branding. 🤯

In this case there is a major disconnect with the old audience and perhaps an irreparable loss of trust. We'll see if Jag will manage to win some new audience and perhaps convince some of the old ones to hop back on board. So take your branding seriously. It truly can move the masses.

Tips for Building a Brand Colour Palette

Start by mapping out your audience, mission and values. It’s also good to do some research on your competition and figure out their visual trends and preferences. Also sometimes it’s easier to learn what you want for yourself by figuring out first what you don’t want, so find some examples of those cases too.

A good tool in designing your colour palette is to build a mood board. You can put there visuals that represent your product’s personality, your target audience, materials used in your product, atmospheres that are connected to your business etc. All these will give you a nice overview of what direction you should go with the colour palette's mood.

There are loads of good tools to explore and create colour palettes, and these are some of my favourites: pigment.shapefactory.co , coolors.co and huemint.com .

‼️ This is important: Things to consider when choosing your brand colours

Make sure they communicate the right emotions and atmosphere
If your colour palette is only few colours, it’s easier to implement
If your colour palette has more colours, it’s more versatile and distinctive, and you get more variety to your visuals
If you choose only few colours, make sure the colours have enough contrast in order to work well together
If you have several accent colours, I recommend choosing a primary and secondary accent, otherwise visuals might look too busy
Choose colours that you’ll be excited to work with for years

Key Takeaways: People feel your brand before they understand it

Don’t undermine your brand’s colour palette, because that’s what creates the first impression.
Be consistent with the brand colours and people start recognising your business just from the colours
Don’t use the colours that everyone else is already using: design a palette that stands out
Base the colour palette to your brand strategy
Misuse of brand colours leads to disconnect with your audience

Thanks for reading all the way through and I hope this sparked some ideas and inspiration in you. If you have any questions or need guidance with your branding, don't hesitate to reach out!