It’s always amazing to me how emotional color selection can be for some. I’ve had clients who have had break downs because of the wrong shade of orange (or some other favorite color). And I’ve heard clients have internal fights over their favorites.

Personal preference is one way to go about these things, but I’m going to push for another way based in color theory and color psychology. A way that is frankly more strategic, which will help you stay rooted in your communications and brand objectives, rather than in your personal preferences.

Color trigger certain emotions on a more biological level, and these emotions have been researched by PANTONE. If you’d like to learn more about their research, I’d highly suggest reading PANTONE’s Guide to Communicating with Color.  If you just want a quicky reference guide on what some of those colors are, check out a graphic I put together, based on that book, below.  The book of course goes into this all much more deeply.

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And if you’d like to just pick one color for psychological purposes and want to pick the rest of your color scheme based on color theory, the first place you should start doing your research is through color wheels.  There’s a reason why color theory is a semester long class in art school, so please please please just see these 2 easy charts as a starting point in your research.

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Any other sources you like to check out on a regular basis?