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I love it when I'm working on a project that doesn't already come with brand colors.
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That means, I could find the perfect color palette for the project. And my hands won't be tied with existing
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brand colors, and I have a bit more freedom to explore.
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But often we don't get to choose our own colors.
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This is good news.
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If the project comes with good brand colors, but not as much if the colors aren't as nice.
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How do you know if you have to use brand colors on your website project or not? Easy.
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If the project already has a logo, that means that you have to use the brand colors.
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Where do you get the colors from? Directly from the logo.
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But the best thing to do, is to ask your clients for the style guide or the brand guideline that came
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with the logo.
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It looks something like this.
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This a guide that a logo designer usually provides to the client, whenever they deliver a final logo
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designs. It will include primary, secondary, and neutral colors.
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It might also have some guidelines on typography and other brand elements.
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If such document exists, then you have to stick with the colors and typography
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provided here. The existence of this guide depends on how much the client was willing to pay and how
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good of a designer they hired.
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If they went cheap and got a logo in fiverr, then they might not have a style guide at all.
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Or if the logo was designed 10 years ago by the owner's nephew, he knew how to click a few buttons on
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photoshop, then they definitely don't have one. Ugly colors are very difficult to work with, and if the client
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saved money on logo design, then I can almost always bet that the colors on the logo are going
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to be terrible.
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Bad logo designers have a unique skill of time travelling into the past and borrowing colors from the
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90s.
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In times like this, I sometimes suggest clients a brand refresh, a color refresh of their brand.
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They can keep the logo and the shape of the logo. And once I design the website, and we settle on the
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new color palette, then they can go ahead and refresh the existing logo with the new colors.
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If that's not possible and the colors are complete junk, then I'll limit the use of their colors on the
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website, and I will use more neutral colors like whites, greys and blacks. Because they can be used with
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any color palette. And then use a bit limited options and limited versions of their brand colors.
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This is a good middle ground between needing to stick with the brand colors, but not using them so
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much, so they don't make the whole website look terrible.