Most people don't understand the importance of a color.
They just know what they like and that's it.
I can tell you thats's not it.
Colors are an important aspect of your everyday life.
We use colors to communicate all the time.
Traffic signals to feelings, we all have a visual vocabulary in colors alone.
We refer to this as a conceptual language.
In this visual language the vocabulary is extensive.
Like english, your visual language has many words, or in this case shades.
Lets look at the color red.
How many words can you associate with this color? Stop, Warning, and Angry are just a couple.
Red, being a primary color, has quite a lot of meanings.
But what happens when I add a little white?
We now have pink. Does this say Stop or Angry? No.
Pink can be little girls, flowers, or Pepto-Bismol.
This shade of red has its own meaning.
Even though it is still red, it has a much different meaning than its root shade or primary.
Pepto-Bismol is a good example of color recognition.
They have branded that shade of red in consumers heads to represent their product.
If they had chosen pure red it wouldn't have had the same effect.
What every designer must realize is there are millions of colors.
Never limit yourself to the six main colors.
Treat colors how painters do, and mix them heavily.
Try to find the color that is just as much an expression of your band as the music or name.
Like we already established you know what you like.
Start there and let your feelings for your music guide you.
There is one rule that is very important to color selection.
The color must be printable!
There are to different types of color. We call them additive and subtractive.
- Additive color is where you mix light to get another color.
Your tv and computer monitor are examples.
They use light to produce the colors.
Additive colors are vary vibrant and bright.
- Subtractive color is where you mix paints or inks together to get a color.
They are dimmer, and don't have the tonal range Additive colors do.
You may be asking why this is important.
Your logo must appear the same way on the web that it does printed.
A lot of additive colors are impossible to print.
You need to select a color that is printable.
You can either use Pantone colors which are expensive for a printer to mix or use cmyk colors.
Pantone has spent a long time working on their colors and are the best in the industry.
If you can afford it, I would suggest you do that.
For the rest of us, we want to use cmyk colors.
The best way to test your color is to print it on your printer, and see how much different it is than your on screen representation.
If its close enough for you then you have picked a winner.
Once you find that primary logo color your half done. Now you need a secondary color.
Even if you don't use it now it will be in your arsenal for later.
It needs to look good with your first color.
Don't pick a color that does not compliment the primary.
You want the secondary color to accent the first color, and yes this one must be printable too.
You can pick a third color. It could come in handy later.
Now what we need is a nice shape for our logo.
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