Using the colour wheel for branding and packaging

Graphic designers. Brand managers. Packaging designers. They all have one thing in common – an innate understanding of how using different colours can influence specific groups of consumers.

Colour psychology is one of the most effective design strategies. Using a specific shade or hue can be the difference between brand recognition and successful sales figures or being ignored by your target customers. And choosing the right combination of colours is just as important.

The colour wheel allows for selecting colours that complement each other well. Also referred to as the colour circle, it indicates the relationships between primary, secondary and tertiary colours. Colours on the opposite sides of the colour wheel are considered to work well together. Other methods, such as split complementary, analogous, or triadic colour selection, can achieve a range of different aesthetics.

But how can you use the colour wheel to create successful packaging?

Well, this guide covers:

• Selecting complementary colours.
• What analogous colours are.
• Advanced techniques, including triad, tetradic or square.
• Why you should consider tints, shades and tones.
• And how this ties in with broader colour psychology.

Please use the contents to go straight to a specific section, or continue reading for full details.

Before detailing how the colour wheel can help when designing your packaging, it is important to define the structure of the colour wheel and the different colours within it.

Primary colours are the three colours that create all other colours through mixing – red, yellow, and blue.

Whilst general colour theory uses these primary colours, it is vital to remember that the colours used when printing (to achieve the other shades) are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These colours are commonly known as CMYK.

Any packaging designs must use CMYK colour and not RGB (Red, Green, Blue) used for screens, websites and online applications. You can see this and other packaging artwork mistakes to avoid in this guide.

Secondary colours are those generated by mixing (in equal amounts) two of the primary colours.

As such, the three secondary colours are green, orange and purple/violet.

Tertiary colours make up the remaining colours within the colour wheel. However, their technical definition is colours created using a full saturation of one primary colour with a half-saturation of a second primary colour.

Another way to describe this is the mixing of equal amounts of a primary and a secondary colour together.

The tertiary colours on the colour wheel are yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green, and yellow-green.

Many people (wrongly) assume that arbitrarily selecting several attractive colours – which may be appealing in isolation – results in a pleasing design aesthetic. But the result is frequently the opposite.

In fact, it is important to select colours that work well together. Using the “colour wheel” is one of the easiest ways to choose these so-called “complementary colours”.

Generally speaking, colours on opposite sides of the wheel are commonly agreed to complement each other. So, for example, blue pairs well with orange, yellow with purple, and red with green.

Besides working well with each other, complementary colours also offer enough contrast in your packaging design and create an attractive, eye-catching appearance.

A similar colour wheel technique is known as selecting “split complementary” colours. This idea involves using the adjacent colours on the opposite side of the colour wheel.

For example, if blue is your primary colour, the complementary colour (on the colour wheel) would be orange. But the split complementary colours would be the red-orange and yellow-orange on either side of this.

This approach allows you to add three colours to your packaging whilst ensuring they all work well together (and create a hierarchy of shades).

So whilst the colour circle allows you to select shades that are widely agreed to work well together, this is just the beginning of how you can use this tool.

A popular tactic is the use of analogous colours. Using analogous colours is an approach in which a design consists of three grouped colours (i.e. next to each other) on the colour wheel.

For example, blue, violet and turquoise (blue-green) are analogous colours.

This technique is common for packaging design as it allows for a clear hierarchy of dominant, supporting and accentuating colours to be used whilst maintaining a balanced visual appearance.

Triadic uses three evenly spaced colours on the colour wheel when selecting which shades to use. This technique is similar to the principle that the three primary colours – red, blue and yellow – are evenly spaced around the colour wheel.

Both tetradic and square combinations utilise four colours (pushing the number that a single packaging design can sensibly accommodate to the limit), with different spacing being the main difference.

Whilst arguably too much in some applications, these methods of colour selection can create some interesting results (especially where capturing attention is the main priority).

A tint is the addition of white to the colour in question or, in some cases, printing less ink. A shade involves using black to darken the colour, whilst a tone is where varying amounts of black and white (effectively forming a grey) makes the shade less bright and intense.

The use of tints, shades and tones can create a hierarchy of design elements, but with a considerably more subtle colour palette than the other colour wheel techniques (which can be too bright for some applications).

This idea can also minimise costs by limiting the number of inks required for a specific design.

Tints, tones and shades can also allow for the final technique – monochromatic colours for packaging design. Monochromatic uses a single colour in its’ varying tints, tones and shades to create the design.

The result is a clean, well-coordinated appearance. However, another key benefit is that using a single ink can help keep packaging costs low (making this popular for lower-priced goods and more industrial type packaging).