Colour is one of the most significant aspects of your brand’s design. It communicates a wealth of emotion and personality and keeps your presentation consistent. Many exciting, young brands look towards colourful designs to express boldness and playfulness. In 2022, another trend has firmly established itself in the brand and graphic design:
Neon colours.
Neon takes colourful one step further. Brand design agencies know its potential for signalling alertness and demanding attention. But working with such bright colours can quickly turn out to be garish and incohesive. As a design agency in London that thrives on innovative brand design, we’ll share a few tips on making neon colours work professionally for your brand.
Adjust the Temperature
Neon colours are immensely hot and bright in tone. But in your designs, you’re not bound to use them at the very extreme end of the spectrum. Instead, play around slowly transitioning in the full effect of colour, moving from a lower saturated or cooler tone to a brighter and warmer one. This creates a more natural flow for the viewer.
If you’re aiming for a bold and colourful appeal, consider using warm colours more than cool ones, as they add intensity to your image.
Neon in the Background
One of the eBay uses for neon colours in branding material is the background. This means you can take a solid colour and make it match with typography and other elements. It creates a bold pop but isn’t offensive to the eye as the neon has nothing else to contest with. Make sure your typography and other design elements have enough contrast to the neon colour to remain well visible.
Neon backgrounds with black and white elements are an easy way to offset very bright colours with clearly readable elements.
Create a Palette of Primary Colours
Experiment with using a set of three colours as the primary colours of an image and give equal importance to each. This works for the actual primary shades of red, blue and yellow. Still, you can quickly shift this combination along the colour wheel to create other striking combinations. Just make sure the colours are equidistant on the spectrum.
Explore the Relationship of Colours
One safe way to incorporate neon colours into your design is to use them in conjunction with other bright colours or concerning more neutral tones. If there is already vibrancy in your image, adding splashes of neon can elevate this further and make it even more exciting. Neutral tones should allow the eye to relax a little and help the colours pop.
Do the Unexpected
And finally, don’t be boring! Neon colours just scream for bold choices. If your brand wants to stand out from the masses, find new and unexpected ways to use splashes of colour. For example, play around with which elements of an image are usually expected to be brightly coloured. You could desaturate those elements and instead have a neon background pop. Use unexpected colour combinations to light your picture and create modern, daring contrasts.
Incorporating bright colours into your brand design can be a daunting step if you’re not entirely sure what you’re doing. Luckily, a brand design agency can help you. ZAK is a design agency in London that has perfected its use of bright colours to bring brand ideas to life. Get in touch with us today to discuss your next project.
