Colour is a decision, not a preference

The fastest way to derail a brand project is to argue about colour by taste. Someone likes green. Someone’s partner hates green. The CEO once had a bad experience with green. None of it is about the brand.

Colour isn’t decoration in a brand — it’s doing a job. It sets a temperature (calm or urgent, warm or clinical), it separates you from the competitor who owns the obvious choice in your category, and it earns its keep by being usable everywhere from a tiny app icon to a printed sign.

Roles beat palettes

A pile of pretty swatches isn’t a colour system. Roles are. One colour is the brand — the one people remember. Others are supporting: backgrounds, text, a spark you use sparingly for emphasis. When every colour has a role, people apply them correctly without asking, and the brand stays coherent as it spreads.

The unglamorous half: contrast

A colour that only works in the logo and fails as text is half a colour. We test palettes for real accessibility — enough contrast to read, on the backgrounds you’ll actually use — because a brand that can’t be read is just an expensive mood board. Beautiful and legible isn’t a compromise. It’s the standard.

So when we present colour, we’re not asking whether you like it. We’re showing you what it does. Liking usually follows once you can see the job it’s doing.