While toned-down colors are still the majority’s favorite picks, the bold color palettes made their way as cohesive graphic design elements. They are primarily chosen for advertising, branding, and web design, where colors play a pivotal role in alluring attention and leaving a lasting impact.
Let’s discuss how bold colors became a good pair for diverse kinds of graphic design media and objectives.
Bold colors are often known as pop colors as well. A bold color scheme usually refers to bright and splashy colors. It’s not wrong since one of the key remarks of bold color choices notably lies in its brightness.
However, bold colors are not only the bright ones. If you search for bold color palettes, you are likely to find a broad range of hues—they vary from vibrant (like Yellow) to muted (such as Burgundy).
This signifies that in addition to the color brightness, they typically have a prominent saturation composition, making them look intense or even fierce.
You can pretty much find examples or inspiration of color palettes with vivid and bold hues in your surroundings.
This photo of fallen leaves by Jeremy Thomas has a pretty vivid color palette. It consists of purple, magenta, and shades of orange and yellow.
If the first example brings bright ones, this is the total opposite. The flower bouquet is dominated by muted yet refined colors. Still, they have intense hues ranging from Rose Blue to Wine colors.
On top of your surroundings, big names, for instance, Slack’s brand color palette also applies a wide range of bold colors. They combine Hot Purple with Blue, Green, Tea, Va Va Voom Yellow, and Deep Rose.
Keep in mind that bold colors can be somewhat overwhelming. You need to consider various things when implementing them into your graphic designs. At least consider the following three.
You may have already heard about these a lot! Basic comprehension of color schemes and color psychology helps designers and brands narrow down their color choices. This is because colors have a strong impact on influencing or triggering emotions. Hence, your choice should align with your message objective.
On the other hand, if you know about color schemes, it will be easier for you to establish a harmonious brand’s color personality. For this task, you can find inspiration for compatible color combinations using tools like Adobe color palette.
The colors in your visual designs should portray the brand’s value while catering relevancy to the audience.
This is a cool tip when you use bold colors in graphic design. Often, people fail to create good-looking designs in bold colors since they don’t apply this rule of thumb. Implementing contrast colors is quite easy, for instance, pairing neutral tones as a background with vivid and vibrant text colors.
Another way is to manipulate them using textures and abstract gradients. Specifically, gradients in linear or abstract variants bring more stylish and delicate color combinations and contrast.
There are various gradients, but abstract gradients are more like freestyle since you can add numerous anchor points and diffuse and steer the colors from different angles.
Whether you use abstract gradients or other gradient types, you need to pay attention to the color mix.
First and foremost, determine the color base so you can define the next color choices. When you’re done with it, pair them with analogous colors or pick the same color in different shades from the color wheels and limit the selection. These steps are crucial in preserving consistent and cohesive patterns.
Obviously, it’s imperative to create effortless transitions of bold colors in an abstract gradient. Thus, you need extra effort to pinch and adjust the anchor points. For this reason, you may also consider playing with opacity.
To conclude, the bold color palettes are proven to create remarkable first impressions and long-lasting memories while triggering a particular emotional connection. That is why brands consider using these color combinations, as there is an urge to win the audience’s hearts and defeat their competitors through visual designs.
In that regard, the abstract gradients are one of the other choices to generate a more practical yet enjoyable and powerful color palette. Their combination is versatile; you can use them as design elements, adding dimension and depth or spotlighting certain design elements.
That said, when implemented carefully, the palettes of bold colors and abstract gradients become a powerful branding tool and element.
