When you design or build a website, you will have a lot of decisions to make. You may think that your choice of font and colour is not a primary concern. That would be a mistake. There are plenty of people out there willing to offer help and advice. For example, if you are building an academic site, there are people providing very useful paperhelp review as well as high-quality academic content for your future website.
Before asking other people for help, you should do a bit of groundwork yourself. The colours and fonts you choose should be driven by your audience. Who are they and what are they expecting from you? You need to create the right impression. These decisions and your overall brand will play a big part in whether your site visitors choose to purchase from you or not.
Colour psychology explores the connection between colours and behaviours. It charts how the use of colour influences consumer impressions of a brand and whether or not colour helps persuade consumers to choose one brand over another.
The use of colour is important because this is where first impressions are made. If you are setting up a new company or brand, you need to make a strong first impression. Here are three factors you should consider when choosing colours for your site:
If you occupy a specific niche, you might want to choose a distinctive colour that is easily recognisable and sets your brand apart. Think purple and Cadburys. If you are watching a film and someone is in a bright yellow cab, the film is probably set in New York. If it's a black cab, you are probably in London. These subconscious associations are powerful. If you can associate a distinctive colour with your brand, you have made a great start.
Colours affect emotion and mood. Warm colours like red, yellow and orange evoke emotions such as love, passion, happiness or anger. Cool colours such as blue, green and purple are associated with calmness or possibly with negative emotions such as sadness.
When choosing a colour for your brand, you should also consider cultural differences. This can be challenging as the effect of colour on behaviour and emotions may be very different in different parts of the world. If you do your research, you will make informed choices. Colour combinations may also provoke emotions or feelings. It is thought that the McDonald's logo is so ubiquitous that the combination of yellow and red can make people feel hungry!
Your choice of colour can also affect how credible you or your company appears. For example, navy and green are used by brands that want to assure users of their professionalism and trustworthiness. On the other hand, a company that uses vibrant, neon colours will be looking to portray a completely different image. So the bottom line is to choose your colour with care and to let that decision be driven by who your target audience is.
Colour and fonts work hand in hand. Choice of fonts can sometimes be overlooked but it is as important as your choice of colour. Here are three factors you should consider when choosing fonts for your site:
Your font should do two things before anything else. Firstly - be easy to read across all platforms. Secondly - convey who your brand is. Spend some time thinking about how you want your brand to be perceived before choosing the font. Your font should then match that personality. For example, serif fonts are classic, traditional and trustworthy. Sans-serif fonts are modern and clean and minimal.
Every brand has a message they want to communicate to their clients. The right font will reinforce that message. Fonts can also help your visitors navigate your website - good use of different fonts and different font weights will help guide your site visitors and make sure they quickly and easily understand your message.
If your design is neat and ordered, your fonts should be too. If your design is simple and minimal, your fonts should reflect that. As with colours, fonts help define your users' first impression of you and your company, so take care with your choice. The bottom line is - much like any other brand design decision - your font should match your brand personality and should be able to work in lots of different formats - print, online, social media etc.
We hope you have found this overview of the importance of colour and fonts useful. These are important decisions and ones that - hopefully - you will live with for a long time. It's worth doing the research, deciding what message you want to convey and getting these decisions right. Good luck!
by Katerina Urbanskaya | 27 Sep 23