Color and Cannabis Brands: How Color Scheme Affects Marketability

Take a minute to think of the following brands: McDonalds. Macy’s. Your favorite football team. What is the first thing that comes to mind?

For most, the answer is the logo and/or color scheme. These two play a huge role in any brand, so they are the elements that people remember the most.

Since I’ve already discussed the intricacies of marijuana logo design in a previous article, now is a good time to examine how- and why- colors play such an important role in branding your cannabis business.

What is color theory?

Designers and artist spend their whole lives studying color. But all of us started with a critical foundation to understand color, so we can understand how it effects our designs. In this way, learning the basics of color theory will give you the ability to create a color scheme that will work really well for your business.

Color is essential in branding not only because it helps create excellent design, but also because it gives your business an identity. Without color, your brand would look muted, cold, uninteresting and impersonal.

But when used appropriately, color emphasizes what matters, giving your brand a personality and helping you attract the right audience.

If you’ve ever taken an art class, you are probably familiar with the color wheel. It was designed to organize colors in a way that makes it easy to generate color combinations. The color wheel has 3 primary colors: red, yellow and blue.

When combining two of the primary colors, we get the secondary colors: green, orange and purple.

When combining the primary and secondary colors, we get the tertiary colors: red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-purple and red-purple.

Yet when looking at a color scheme for your cannabis business, you aren’t limited to these 12 colors. Every color has hundreds of light, dark, and varying color combinations. This is where the three attributes that affect color- hue, saturation, and value- come into play:

Hue: Hue is a term that is interchangeable with the word “color”.

Saturation: Saturation is the intensity of a hue. When a hue has high saturation it is vibrant and rich looking. When it has low saturation it looks muted and dull.

Value: Value is the lightness and darkness of a hue. Value allows us to create contrast and differentiate colors.

If you have a color scheme that looks off, or doesn’t fit well with your brand, changing one or more of these attributes can unify a color scheme.

Creating Color Harmonies:

Color harmonies are standards that designers use to make combining colors easier. It may sound complicated, but really color harmonies just refers to colors that naturally look good together. These are often categorized on the color wheel, based on an individual color’s placement in comparison to others’.

What do Colors Mean for Your Cannabusiness?

It is essential to know more about color to create effective color schemes. But it is also important to know what a color says about your brand. Like all other aspects of a brand (logo, typography and voice), colors influence consumers psychologically.

So the next question you should be asking yourself is:

What does this color scheme say about my cannabis business?

Keep in mind that colors can mean many things to different people and cultures. But there is a standard of how colors typically affect consumers, which is important to know when selecting a color scheme that will represent your brand.

There are an excellent number of resources online about the many meanings of colors, but here a some general guidelines:

 Red: Bold, High Energy, Aggressive

 Yellow: Fun, Happiness, Wisdom

 Blue: Trustworthy, Calming, Cold

 Purple: Creative, Wealthy, Royal

 Orange: Warm, Social, Enthusiastic

 Green: Earthy, Growth, Reliable

 Brown: Dependable, Honesty, Friendly

 Black: Powerful, Authority, Sophisticated

 Gray: Neutral, Stability, Subdued

 White: Pure, Clean, Simple