The Hidden Impacts of Color on Digital Brand Experiences

Ever notice how businesses that deal in physical goods–from bicycles to shoes to fast food–color outside the lines of their brand all the time? Whether it’s a celebrity collaboration, limited edition, or anniversary, brands use colors outside their normal palette in their products, packaging, and promotions for plenty of good reasons. 

Here’s the rub: color is just as inextricable from the digital environment as it is from the physical world. Not only that, but digital provides an unlimited sandbox for expression. The thing is, this freedom with color experimentation can simultaneously be more intimidating to pull off for marketers. If you’re wondering where to get started, below are three slam-dunk reasons why it’s 100% worth it to start experimenting, along with a color combo we think has huge creative potential. 

Color is our connection between the digital and natural worlds.

Using screens doesn’t mean we should ignore the natural world. In fact, any time we as designers can draw connections to the world around us, we should! Color is a way to make the digital space feel more real and familiar. A big way we see this coming to life right today is with websites that don’t have a white background, but instead let the text and content swim in a rich color evocative of what they want to convey - a bold dark green for rich luxury, or a subtle creamy ecru for cozy comfort. 

We’re particularly obsessed this year with what we’ll call deep-sea blue and jellyfish pink.

While this color combo might still seem a little unconventional for a website or brand campaign, it has many occurrences in nature (as their names imply). These colors show up in storm clouds, sunsets, and mountain ranges (see above).

Let’s stick with these colors and see what else we can learn about color in digital.

In digital, brand experiences can be micro targeted – allowing you to fully lean into color experiments.

The associations of colors are inherent to our interactions with sites, and not just for CTA links or login buttons. The experience you are building and the colors that populate it should actually reflect one another. If you have a strong brand, this means you can even use colors you normally wouldn’t, if the experience calls for it. For instance, the pink/navy combination above shows up on Google Labs’ website - a great context for the sense of immersion and exploration that these colors conjure.  Your brand could do the same with tertiary colors, or even completely new colors, for a microsite and campaign page.

Use navy/pink in these instances: 

When talking about AI: these colors convey safety, calm, innocence, and trust. These assuring feelings can help offset some of the lingering fears surrounding AI agents.

Healthcare applications: Pink is a much less scary color than red, making it a strong choice for healthcare websites. And by pairing it with navy, you add a level of sophistication.

Anywhere, but as a duo: the combination of these two balances out any negative associations a user might have with just one of them (pink alone can feel juvenile, even naive, and navy by itself can feel too stoic and controlling).

Color continues to be our best tool for better accessibility. 

There’s one other consideration when it comes to color in digital. If you are doing a brand refresh or audit, it might be worth looking at how tweaks to your existing color palette could make or break your brand’s accessibility compliance. By now, most people know about making sure color contrasts are ADA compliant. Did you know that there is also such a thing as too much contrast? Color contrast is a scale, going from 1:1 to 21:1 (1:1 being no contrast at all, and 21:1 being the most extreme contrast of white and black). The sweet spot for screen contrast is actually in the middle of this scale, between a 7:1 and 14:1 contrast ratio. Less than 7:1 can be too difficult to read and interact with, while more than 14:1 can cause eye strain and headaches for users. 

With a ratio of 9.78, accessibility is just one more thing we love about the deep-sea blue & jellyfish pink combo. 

We also used this ratio scale when coming up with our own “true blue” brand, and we recommend you use a contrast scoring tool to do the same with yours, whether it’s a palette you’ve used for a long time or a brand-new look you’re cooking up. 

Speaking of which, want to talk color more with Bekah? Reach out today and let’s get cooking!