Elements of Design in Marketing: Color and Some Theory

Creating marketing pieces vary in different ways. Of course, it’s always based on the theme and who the targeting audience is. Still, it also relies on how it is executed to make an impact once it’s thrown into the online world (considering that we read most of our articles online, that’s where you’re going to find it). Creating infographics, ads, or informational pieces like this one is not only the information you need to make sure is triple-checked and ready to be read, but it’s also how you are placing your graphics to emphasize your work. 

In The Elements of Graphic Design by Alex White, He goes over the “7 Elements of Design” and the importance of finding these elements in your everyday space. If it makes sense with unity and gestalt, then the design works. This is also applied to how you execute the marketing communication of your choice to your audience. This article will go over one of the seven, probably the second most important from the list (not saying all seven are NOT important), color. 

Why Color? Color is the practical guide to the viewer. But, of course, since most people don’t care about “art” and only care about the final product, marketers are given the challenge of persuading viewers with their ads to buy their product. So, while putting the face of the product on a full spread in a magazine would be the answer, marketers need to understand the fundamental color theories to express their products more vibrantly to attract viewers. 

Without color, audiences won’t have things that entertain the eye or make them go through a journey that is your ad. You can travel across the space, create illusions that make it seem welcoming or even create mystery with illuminance. Whatever you decide to choose, the color will be there to recognize your product or ad that impacts whoever is viewing. 

Let’s explore a few color theories that help explain essential art elements and how they work with just a few topics when studying the color wheel.

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Colors We need to understand the basic rules of art, the color wheel. There are many ways to explain the color wheel and theories, but for now, we will go over the three different types of colors you may find on the first site of a color wheel. We have:

Primary Colors – Your main colors on the color wheel: Yellow, Red, Blue.

Secondary Colors – They are colors created from mixing the primary colors and green, Violet, and Orange. (These six colors make the colors you visibly see on the rainbow!)

Tertiary Color: These are colors made by combining both primary and secondary together: Yellow Orange, Red Orange, Red Violet, Blue Violet, Blue Green, Yellow Green.

With knowing these rules, you can create dynamic ads where you play with text and color to create a marketing communication that is more unique to your product or brand. You may be thinking, “Who cares?” And the answer is that you should! Working with your designers who create your ads and knowing this little bit of art elements knowledge will help you communicate and collaborate more efficiently to create more dynamic pieces that will execute your message to your audience. 

RGB vs. CMYK Now that you know about the basics. Time to have a quick lesson in print!

RGB, or red, blue, and green. Are the colors that create the interlacing on LED screens of all of your technologies. Similar to your primaries, most of your designers or anything you’d make for the digital world will be visible through the colors and extend just like the primary colors and so on. 

In print, the rules change due to the pigments found in ink printers. Because of this, RGB doesn’t work because the colors will not be as vibrant and dull down, changing your ad colors from your original idea to these dull, three shades different colors. So instead, CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) create images of what you see in magazines, tabloids, or physical ads printed. 

What makes CMYK unique is when combined, they are placed at a degree of a circle and leave the center empty for white to show to create the different shades you see in an ad. Exciting stuff, right? Don’t believe it? Next time you visit a magazine, try to focus and look closely and see that the image is actually made up of thousands of tiny circles put close together to create the whole picture you are looking at!

With this, you can now make mistakes when you see colors in a different shade. Don’t freak out! It just may be a user error. 

What Have We Learned? In this short time, we have learned the essential elements. And if you are still asking why then I’ll tell you!

The seven elements of design, the color being the 7th and final element on the list, should have a higher ranking. Without understanding color, you don’t have a straightforward design or straightforward interpretation of what you’re looking at. Marketers should learn these essential skills if they aren’t fluent in them in their background to understand their ads and others better to not make mistakes as other competitions or maybe something that has inspired them along the way. Whatever it may be, take a chance on learning this skill! Perhaps even your color spectrum can change too.