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Color Palettes for Science
The Science of Design:
Creating a Color Palette
Welcome to our blog series on basic design principles tailored specifically for scientists, engineers, and tech companies! Design may seem like a niche concern for those in technical fields, but understanding its principles greatly enhances the clarity and impact of your work. Today, we’re starting with a fundamental yet powerful concept: creating a color palette for your science brand. We’ll look at why color is important, and how you can start choosing colors to use throughout your media. And in future posts, we’ll dive into using color effectively in figures, mode of action diagrams, and other informational graphics.
Why a Color Palette Matters in Science
You might wonder why a scientist should worry about a color palette. Surprisingly, a well-chosen color palette can make your presentations, reports, and websites feel organized and cohesive. Moreover, colors have the power to evoke emotions and underline your goals.This is essential in connecting with your specific audience. Consider what look and feel you want to convey through branded material. For example, blue often evokes calm and trust, which is why it’s prevalent in the life sciences.
Choosing Colors for Science
A genomics company was looking for a bold branding look that set it apart from its competitors. We chose purple, a trending color that still feels trustworthy, and kept it feeling cohesive with an analogous color scheme.
Where do you begin, when choosing your colors? One of the best places to start, is to define your company’s emotional focus. That may sound antithetical to a science or technology company, but it’s perhaps even more important.
Do you want to evoke excitement and a bold vision, try bright, bold colors.
What about safety and trust? Consider blues or subdued tones.
Are you focused on sustainability? It might sound like a cliche, but there is a reason why many green energy companies rely on green.
One of our favorite tools for creating a color palette is a web app called Coolors.co. This tool helps you pick a primary color and then suggests secondary highlight colors. You can see SayoStudio’s color palette below, where we use brighter secondary colors for elements like buttons and headlines to draw attention. Those of you who are familiar with our work, know that our illustrations, design, and animation use a whole spectrum of colors.
Where our palette is powerful, is pulling all of these varying pieces together. We use it for our fonts and background colors across our website, promotional materials, and our social media platforms to keep our content on-brand, cohesive, and visually appealing.
When we are working with companies, keeping consistent colors is one key way to help make sure that figures, illustrations, marketing content, and scientific art align with the overall branding strategy. An often overlooked aspect of successful design for scientific and engineering companies, is tying in the human aspect. In this slide deck for investor pitches, the introductory slide draws in viewers with a memorable slide with a human eye. The colors have been modified to fit the overall branding of the logo, and carried throughout the slides.
The Ubiquity of Blue in Life Science and Tech Companies
If you’re in the life sciences, you’re probably familiar with the ubiquitous cyan blue. Psychological studies have shown that blue evokes feelings of calm and trust, sentiments that align well with pharmaceutical companies researching new therapies. Even with the same blue as 50 other companies, you can choose bold secondary colors to complement and set yourself apart.
Life Science color palette examples, beyond blue
Here are a couple of example palettes we generated using Coolors to expand on the basic cyan blue color with interesting supporting colors to build a unique look and feel:Examples of color palettes with a primary cyan blue common to life scienes, with intersting secondary colors to make it feel unique to each company. Palette 1: Primary: Cyan Blue Secondary: Lime Green, Bright Orange, Deep Purple Palette 2: Primary: Navy Blue Secondary: Coral Pink, Soft Yellow, TealIn the palettes above, you’ll see three color codes: HEX, RGB, and CMYK. You can use these in any design program to make sure you’re getting the exact match. Curious about what they mean? Here is a quick summary:HEX color code definitionThis color palette for a material science company needed to convey the increased efficiency and reliability that their technology brought to gel science.
Meaning: Six-digit hexadecimal number.
Format: #RRGGBB (e.g., #FFFFFF for white).
Use: Web design and digital graphics.
RGB color code definition
Meaning: Red, Green, Blue.
Format: rgb(R, G, B) with values from 0-255 (e.g., rgb(255, 0, 0) for red).
In our science branding suite you can see how color and repeating visual elements help tie together the look and feel across corporate materials, including company website, letterhead, corporate fact sheet, and more. In this example the softer colors evoke safety and trust for neonatal nutritional supplements.
Color Theory for Science to Build a Brand
All these elements that help create a consistent look or style are what we mean by branding. A strong brand will give your lab or company a memorable look, regardless of who is presenting or what platform you’re sharing on.
You may ask, do you ALWAYS have to use your color palette? Of course not, but the more you can pull in some of the colors, the more memorable your vision will be. If you find yourself consistently straying from your palette, ask yourself if it’s time to readjust and redefine your colors. In future posts, we’ll dive into the importance of white space, the power of effective font choice, and how to choose the right design elements to communicate your science.
Stay Tuned for More Tips
We look forward to offering more design tips for scientists in the weeks to come. Please let us know if this content is helpful, and don’t forget to subscribe to stay updated!By following these basic design principles, you can create more impactful and visually appealing presentations, reports, and other materials. Happy designing!
Where our palette is powerful, is pulling all of these varying pieces together. We use it for our fonts and background colors across our website, promotional materials, and our social media platforms to keep our content on-brand, cohesive, and visually appealing.
When we are working with companies, keeping consistent colors is one key way to help make sure that figures, illustrations, marketing content, and scientific art align with the overall branding strategy.
If you’re in the life sciences, you’re probably familiar with the ubiquitous cyan blue. Psychological studies have shown that blue evokes feelings of calm and trust, sentiments that align well with pharmaceutical companies researching new therapies. Even with the same blue as 50 other companies, you can choose bold secondary colors to complement and set yourself apart.
