Colors are actually made of letters and numbers – who knew?!
When I first began learning about digital design, I certainly didn’t. When it comes to creating a brand’s visual image, there are so many design factors to consider. Some include wording, fonts, size, images, colors, and more. While all these components can contribute to a successful design, color is particularly noteworthy for its ability to be the first to catch a person’s eye.
Colors can evoke emotions, memories, and strong feelings that we want people to positively associate with our brand and products. Because of the endless opportunities to attract customers and to have creative design potential, my favorite newly learned skill is how to use hex codes to create color harmony within a branding suite to keep projects and images consistent and recognizable.
A hex code is a digital code that represents a color value. A color’s unique hex code is based on the individual color’s red values (the first two letters or numbers), green values (the middle two letters or numbers) and the blue values (the last two letters or numbers), or its RGB value. Pure white has a hex code of FFFFFF, and pure black has a hex code of #000000.
As an ambassador for the Career Discovery and Success Center, I have daily tasks revolving around making content for our social media outlets and advertising for events. Being able to speak the design language and learning about the importance of color harmony has allowed me to succeed so far in my tasks and assignments. Auburn has a distinct set of colors and uses their hex codes to create color harmony across all branding and advertising.
When it comes to creating a consistent brand image, you must be specific. For example, in my job, there is no such thing as just the colors “orange” and “blue”. Instead, we use Auburn Orange (e86100), or Samford Brick Orange (cc4eOb), and different shades of each. Or for Navy Blue, it’s Auburn Blue (0b2341), Never to Yield Teal (OO6860) or Bodda Getta Blue (006c9a). By combining any of the colors listed on our color accessibility chart, we are able to use the specific hex codes to create color harmony while promoting our brand to students and publics across the Auburn community.
You may not have noticed, but this practice is common among successful brands. For example, imagine the facebook logo. What does it look like? It’s a blue square with a big “F” in the middle. That blue, it’s hex code #3b5998.
What about Netflix and Youtube? Their colors look very similar, right? They are to the unknowing viewer, but to a design professional (and a curious blog writer), one can see that they are in fact, different. Netflix’s red is #e50914, and YouTube’s is #ff0000.
Consistent use of these colors across all aspects of their brand draws customers to them due to the familiarity and distinctiveness of the colors.
Next time you see a brand you are familiar with or maybe are thinking of making one of your own, think about hex codes and how they can create color harmony that will last for your brand.