The Psychology of Colours and Fonts in Content and Branding

When you think of content, you might only think of text, but content really includes everything that your intended audience sees. Images, colors, and even the fonts you use all impact your content and affect your readers or viewers psychologically. That is why today, we are taking a look at how you can bring your brand influence to your readers or viewers through your choice of color fonts, and images in your content, and branding.

The Psychology of Images in Your Content

Pictures are a big part of content. Even though you may think of images as just something extra that you add to your text, psychologically, they are much more than just an accent. People are visually-oriented, as half of the human brain is dedicated to visual processing. Images will not only bring your content and branding to the next level but will help your branding and message be remembered. These statistics show how and why people respond better to images and process them faster than text alone.

• • 90% of information transmitted to our brain is visual.
  • Presentations with visuals are 43% more persuasive.
  • 65% of us are visual learners.
  • 93% of all communication is nonverbal.
  • Colored visuals increase people’s desire to read content by 80%.
  • Content and branding with images increase a view rate by 94%.
  • Posts with images produce 180% more engagement.
  • People are 85% more likely to buy your product after watching a video about it.
  • It’s easier for people to process images, compared to text.
  • 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual.
  • 60% of the population are visual learners.
  • Images are processed simultaneously.
  • Text is processed sequentially.
  • Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text alone.
  • Most people only remember 20% of what they read.
  • Publishers who use infographics grow in traffic an average of 12% more.

Image source: QuickSprout com

• Content with relevant images gets 94% more views than content without.
• 94% equates to almost double the views, and the boost is noticed across all topics and categories.
• Tweets with images on Buffer receive 150% more retweets.

When you are selecting colors for your brand, choose a palette and consistent methodology so that your images are reflective of your brand and easily recognized as such. Remember to choose relevant images that help get your message across. Refrain from using common stock images just for the purpose of including an image.

The Psychology of Fonts in Your Content

Fonts are often used in images, logos, and other images. The font can make or break your image and can even influence how people feel about your message. Fonts can make a bigger impact and draw out an emotional response.

The font you choose can impart different feelings or ideas. This is because of the psychology of typography:

• Serif fonts are associated with authority, tradition, respect, and grandeur.
  • Popular Serif Fonts: Times New Roman, Bodini, Georgia, Garamond, and Baskerville.
• Sans Serif fonts are associated with being clean, modern, objective, stable, and universal.
  • Popular Sans Serif Fonts: Helvetica, Verdana, Arial, Century Gothic, and Calibri.
• Slab Serif fonts are associated with bold, strong, modern, solid, and funky.
  • Popular Slab Serif Fonts: Rockwell, Courier, Museo, Clarendon, and Bevan.
• Script fonts are associated with being feminine, elegant, friendly, intriguing, and creative.
  • Popular Script Fonts: Lobster, Zapfino, Pacifico, Lucida, and Brush Script.
• Modern fonts are associated with exclusivity, fashionable, stylish, sharpness, and intelligence.
  • Popular Modern Fonts: Infinity, Eurostyle, Majoram, Matchbook, and Politica.

When you think of it like this, it helps get the message across. What does each message make you feel?

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This example of two different fonts saying, “I love you”, really drives home the point of how a font can make you feel and how each font conveys a message. Similarly, if you were to use a Halloween font, it changes the message. The same can be the case if you choose a comical or whimsical font to try to relay a serious message.

The Psychology of Color in Your Content and Branding

Just like fonts help add to the imagery of your text content, color has a big impact on the psychology of your written word as well.  Colour helps call attention to your text, but you may not realize that colors also evoke emotions. Here are the different feelings that colors can make your audience feel.

• Blue: Trust and Security, Calmness, Peace & Honesty, often used by banks
• Green: Associated with wealth, Easiest color for the eyes to process, often used to represent health and wellbeing
• Yellow: Optimistic & Youthful, Fun, Humour, Lightness, Intellect, Logic, and Creativity
• Orange: Stimulates Creativity & Productivity, Creates a Call for Attention
• Red: Creates urgency, vitality & stamina, energy
• Pink: Romantic & Feminine, Often Aimed at Girls or Women
• Purple: Soothe & Calm, Intuition & Imagination

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Summary and Takeaways for Your Company

Hopefully, now you understand how important images, fonts, and colors are. When it comes to your content, mixing it up with images, fonts, and colors in addition to text can help drive home your meaning and gives feeling and emotions that are impossible to have with plain text alone. Understanding just a bit of the psychology behind these aspects of content can make it that much easier to drive your point home to your audience. The important takeaway to remember when it comes to branding is that you still need to establish a palette and color set, or style for your fonts, colors, and imagery so that it becomes recognizable as your own.