- [Voiceover] Once you have a brand constructed,
it's time to do some color exploration.
This stage of logo development, for me, is a fun one.
This is where I experiment a lot and try different
approaches with color.
To facilitate this effort, I always work in
global colors and establish what I call a tonal family.
So, if you look at this design in front of you,
one of the explorations for the company Seed Collective
that I work with,
I did this color exploration for this iteration,
and you can see the tonal family I created over here.
Now, when I actually work and colorize things,
I'll actually create little palettes over here,
especially if I'm not sure what those colors
are gonna be yet, because it makes it easier
than clicking, going over and clicking the swatches palette.
I can simply select a shape, let's say I wanted
to turn this to this blue down here,
and I'll use Eyedropper, and I'll just select color.
Now of course I don't wanna do that,
but that's how I'll work, 'cause I'll have all these
color swatches out here, and I'll just use the Eyedropper.
Sometimes I've imported an image, and then I'll sample
the image just to get the visual idea of what I want,
and then once I have that, then I'll go in and fine-tune
the numbers and make sure they color break correctly
and accurately as well.
So color exploration is very open, very wide,
but when I use colors, I'm always using global colors.
Now I wanna show you why.
Right now, if I click on this darker blue color
in our tonal family, you can see it highlighted
in the swatches palette.
Let's say I wanna change that color.
So I'm gonna go into this color swatch, and I wanna make it,
let's say more purple.
So I'm gonna push more, actually take a little blue out,
and push more red into it, and we're gonna make it
distinctly more purple.
I'll take some of the black out.
Once again, we're goin' for purple here.
So, like that.
I think that'll look good.
We'll click OK.
Well, we've changed the color swatch,
but none of our design is changed.
We'd have to now select this
and select everything colored this color,
then go over and select the color swatch.
Well, that's very inefficient with our time.
There's a much better way of doing that.
So let's Command + Z, let's remove all the changes
we created, including the color swatch,
so we'll go back to what we originally had,
and I'm gonna double click on this color swatch now,
and I'm gonna change this to a global color
by just selecting Global and go OK.
If I select this now, watch what happens.
Nothing is selected in here, because once again,
we didn't use global colors to begin with,
so it's not associated with this swatch anymore.
But, if I now color it this color, it is,
and so now I can simply go into this swatch
and let's go back and let's make our purple color again.
Like this.
And let's go OK, and it changes in our art file
because it's a global color, meaning it'll globally change
wherever we have that color applied,
and if you get in the habit of making sure
all your colors are global, and you can tell that
by looking at the swatches palette,
any color that has this bottom right-hand white rectangle
on the bottom right-hand corner of each swatch,
that means it's a global color.
Any swatch that doesn't have that means it's not.
So you wanna make sure, as you start color exploration,
just get in the habit of when you create a color,
to click Global.
That way, moving forward, if you ever wanna make a change,
you don't have to manually select everything,
you can simply click into this color, make the change,
and it changes it globally.
And here's why, here's another example.
So here's another exploration.
The difference between this one and the previous one
is all these colors are global colors, as you can see here.
So we're gonna change and transform this design
by transforming the global colors.
So on this one, we're gonna go for a more brown hue
in terms of the overall value of this color,
so we'll go ahead and plug some numbers in here.
And you can preview it if you want, that looks good,
so we'll go OK.
We're gonna go to the next color, which is this one,
it's this swatch right here, so we'll go ahead
and jump into this, and once again, we'll change the color.
And we'll just plug in, once in,
this can be any color you want.
And we'll go OK, and we're gonna jump to this swatch now.
And we'll plug in the color here.
And that changes it.
We got a couple more, this purple color.
I want this more of, kinda like a faint, dull green.
And some black.
That looks good.
And the last one is this, that's a teal color now,
and I want this more traditionally blue.
Like that.
So using global colors, we've transformed this entire design
and it goes really quickly.
I didn't have to select any of the art to change the color,
and that's the point I'm trying to make,
is that global colors are gonna facilitate easier
color exploration, make it more efficient for you
to try a wide range of things.
Now on this design, the brand system that I delivered
looked much like this.
I had a horizontal format here,
a vertical format shown here,
I had an encapsulated format, almost a badge type sticker
they could use it for here, and just the brand mark itself.
Now, when you work on branding projects that are
more intensive in terms of a lot of detail,
a lot of independent shapes, you don't wanna have to
go in here and select everything, especially on this one,
because some of it is masked into a shape
to form the nice little brand character mark
that's at the top of this design.
But, because we've taken the time to have a tonal family
set up that's all based off of brand colors,
you can see the global color over here,
I can just click into this and I can just start
manipulating my color really quickly,
it doesn't take a lot of time to do this,
in order to transform my design fairly quickly.
So if I go OK, you can see how it's already
transformed two of these colors, this brown was just a tint
of this base color, the darker color, to create all
the other detailing elements such as in his lapel
on this brand character's jacket.
Now we're gonna even do this gray color here,
so if I go into the gray color, we're gonna make this more
of a neutral kinda tan color.
So we'll just go into that and we'll go ahead
and punch in some numbers for that, like this,
so it gives us this nice tan color, and we'll go OK,
and it's already in use, so we're gonna rename it Tan,
that's fine, like this, and you can see how it's
taken that tan color and it's now populated it
throughout the design.
So that's how you'll wanna handle making universal
changes like this, you'll wanna use global colors
to facilitate that a lot easier, and it's gonna make
the process go a lot faster as well.
Now on the next one, this is where I got into
the label design, and so this use of brand colors applies as
you start moving into the print collateral pieces as well.
Now this was the final logo mark that Printer's
decided to go with, and this is actually the label design
for their product that they initially launched,
which was their line of vodka,
and I wanna change this now, the blue is not
their brand color, it's just one of the comp colors
I created for this specific skew of vodka.
I wanna show you how you can universally change
a very complex design like this,
this is actually a radial blend, you can see it over here
in the transparency of this blue color,
just add some shading into the corner areas of this label,
and you can see blue is handled in a lotta different ways.
Here's some subtle usage of the blue to create
all these lines that are giving it character there,
and all the detailing in the logo, it'd take me a long time
to go through and click and select every one of those shapes
using that color, but because this color is set up
as a brand color as shown here, I can just simply
double click this color, go in here, and within seconds,
I can go ahead and just transform this color
to be exactly what I want it to, this is their parent color,
it's a copperish type color, and I can click OK,
and transform the entire design that quickly.
This is why I use global colors.
It's just a no brainer.
Now, it doesn't just apply to extensive use of color
like this, it also helps in terms of the ideation efforts
of working out colors for a client and helping them to
come to a point where they can make a decision.
Now, this is the final logo design for another company
based out of Slovakia, and it has to do with brewing,
and this was their design they went for,
this is the base, black and white logo marks I created,
and now when it came to color, I had showed 'em initially
some color comps, but he wasn't gelling with the color,
he didn't know how to handle the color, and he wasn't sure
if the logo mark would work in this color, or that color,
and I assured him, I go, "Look, this brand mark is gonna
"look great on any color because it doesn't necessarily
"have to be the mark that's colored.
"In this case, you can take a simplified one-color mark,"
and I set up this kinda grid of colors, and I said,
"It will work on any color, that has more to do with layout
"than it does the color of the logo itself."
But because I took the time to work out these iterations
like this with the brand color, it helped the client
pick one, he picked the third over from the right
at the bottom, this one here, as his final ideation
in terms of his brand color, and this is what the final
brand color mark came out looking like,
which I think works well.
Now, when it comes to color, color isn't just a matter of
knowing how to set up global colors in an application
like this, it also has to come down to the concept
of the color.
Concept is what's gonna help you to figure out
your coloring and your motif.
Context is gonna define it.
In this case, this was for the New Orleans
Recreation Department, and this was a brand identity
I created for 'em, and part of me exploring color here
was to know the culture, and this goes back to
your creative brief, and figuring out all the information
vital for designing not only appropriately,
but also guiding you in your color choices,
because I made my color choices based off of
New Orleans culture.
Purple is big part of their culture, so I took purple,
and I used that in the design.
Gold is another big part of their culture of color,
and I used that.
Because this is the Recreation Department,
it has to do with outdoors, so I thought of grass
and action, and I used green for that.
And Recreation also has to do with nature, being outdoors,
Louisiana is right there on the coast, so it has to do
with water, so we used that color as well.
So making those kind of choices is what's gonna help you
to define color.
Now I also colorized the typography, these colors too,
so I picked up on it.
So this mark, this is the final color mark
for this exploration.
So letting culture guide you in terms of your color effort
is gonna greatly assist in your final logo designs,
so it's really important to keep that in mind.
Lemme show you a few examples of how color can also
enhance the concept, and prove the concept,
and prove the communication.
Here's a high-tech company.
Think blue, the tonal family is a blue with black,
to work well with this industry.
Here's another one, a bunch of CPAs who cater to
the winery industry in Oregon, and so they wanted to cater
to that industry, they wanted to be professional,
but still we're able to capture a nice clever image
with the tie making up the bottle, and a wine type of color
to reinforce that concept.
Here's the outreach, this is using custom logo types
to represent kinda that inner city vibe with graffiti,
and I used color to almost create that concrete jungle
aspect of this concept.
Here's an events company.
Events is all about a diverse range of people
coming to one event to enjoy it together,
so this celebrates that kind of diversity
in this brand mark.
Healthcare.
When it comes to healthcare, they want to imbue
healthy choices, healthy living, and I think of the outdoors
and being green and growing and flourishing,
and so that was the concept behind this,
and color was used to communicate that along with
a nice little floral motif and people nested into it.
Here's a local roller derby team.
Roller derby is all tough and hence the dark black,
but then, because this is a female roller derby team,
I'm utilizing more feminine colors like pink
and soft greens and yellows to kinda make a nice contrast
with the concept going on here.
Design is not mere decoration, and neither is color.
Using color to reinforce a core concept,
communicate associations, and represent additional meaning
in the context of logo design demonstrates smart, creative,
and strategic thinking.
So as you approach your color choices, take the time
to derive meaning out of the hues you select
for your branding projects.