Pantone Book: The use of colour in Graphic Design

Colour is used within Graphic Design as a way to make a company, product or concept stand out from the crowd, whilst aligning with their brand values and visually enticing the user. A graphic designers main aim is to visually promote a particular message to a large audience, or visually present information. The effective use of colour can gain the attention of the target audience, or help to present the information by reflecting the emotions, ethos, values etc. Graphic Designers base their colour choices on the intended target audience because a colour scheme for a design aimed at children would be very different to that aimed at a formal company or adult brand.

The use of colour in Graphic Design also needs to be considered on a practical level as well as aesthetic. Graphic Designers use the 2 colour systems of ‘additive’ and ‘subtractive’. They need to decide which system is suitable for their particular design project. Anything that emits light uses additive and everything else uses subtractive colours. The context in which the designs will be used therefore need to be a main consideration and can impact the use of colour. 

The colour trends in Graphic design can be seen in a both negative and positive way. The colours that are in trend can influence designers to create aesthetic and popular work, but it is not visually unique to the other designs that are also following the colour trend.

It is important for Graphic Designers to take the colour trends into consideration because it means that their work will have a higher chance at being recognised and liked by the target audience, but it may not make them stand out. As a designer, we need to decide whether we want to follow the crowd and create safe work that we know it’ll be liked by a lot of people, or to ignore all of the trends and create something different and unique to what is already out there. The final outcome may be remembered for longer than if it had followed the trend, but equally it may be rejected and not appreciate. This is a risk that can be taken, but the designer needs to decide upon this.

An example of a colour trend in Graphic Design is IK Blue, a dark ultramarine blue colour, discovered by Yves Klein. According to the website ‘Trendlist’, it was most popular 2013, but also nearly as popularly used in 2014 and 2015. A Graphic Designer’s main consideration when designing a company’s brand identity is often the colour scheme. It is evident that during this time period, a lot of designers opted for the use of IK Blue. Visually it works very well and is on trend, but it does not make the companies stand out from one another as the majority of them use the colours of blue, white and black. This defeats the point of brand identity and how each brand should be identifiably different, showing that following design trends may not always lead to a positive outcome.