Grab my free PDF, Free Forever Toolkit. This toolkit contains the links to the free forever versions of a wide variety of resources that can help your business with marketing and design. From time to time, I will give some tips on how to use those resources.
If you don’t have a brand kit yet for your business, or you’re making a design for something else entirely, you may find yourself at a loss for which colors to pick. Color pairing can be difficult if you aren’t used to it and let’s face it, sometimes even when you are.
Whenever I need help quickly coming up with a color palette, I’ll jump on to Coolors and press the “Start the generator!” button. Five colors will appear on your screen with their hexadecimal color code (hex code for short). You can pop these codes into just about anywhere that you might be designing, including Canva, to get the exact same color.
Pro tip: Click straight on the color you like to easily copy and later paste the hex code.
If you aren’t a fan of the colors that show up, just press the space bar and get a new set. Continue until you’ve found something that you like.
Now, I have no idea what the algorithm is that they use to create these color palettes. It might very well be completely randomized. So far, every time I’ve used it, there seems to be a mixture of darker colors and lighter colors. If two colors pass the recommended contrast ratio of 4.5:1, then I’ll use those as the background and text colors.
You could also use a more neutral color like white, grey or black as your background color and use a handful of the other colors as accent colors. You do not have to use all 5 of the colors you see on your screen. Feel free to pick and choose just 3 or 4 that you like.
Just be sure to use this contrast checker so that you’ll know if the text color contrasts enough against the background that you choose. This is key to your designs being more accessible to colorblind people, as well as it just being easier on everyone’s eyes.
With these resources and rough guidelines, you’ll have the perfect colors for your design in no time!
All the best,
Ryanne Zender
Disclaimer: While marketing is based in part on statistics and psychology, it is not an exact science. Every business and market are unique. What may work for one business, will not necessarily work for another. There are no guarantees in marketing, and this post is for informational and educational purposes only and does not replace professional advice. You can check out the full list of disclaimers and disclosures here.
