Let’s take a look at how to use colour in our brand styling.

Just like your brand identity elements and web design, there are lots of different considerations that go into creating your brand photography photoshoot. Colour is one of them.

Have you ever thought about how certain colours make you feel?

Blues might generally give you a feeling of calm and serenity.  Greens, a sense of vitality and freshness.  Red symbolises strength, energy, and love. Orange invokes confidence and creativity. Black is typically perceived as formal, dramatic and sophisticated.

Colours evoke emotions and an emotional response to your brand photography is exactly what we want.

Colour as a styling element in your brand photography photoshoot.

The use of colour in your wardrobe, settings, backdrops, location, props, accessories, product styling, etc can be used to great effect when conveying your brand’s overall feel, mood or vibe.  Colour helps us make that instant human connection through imagery. And I’m not only talking about your logo colour…

Of course the most obvious place to start is with the brand colours that feature in your brand identity elements like the logo.  And we can absolutely incorporate these into your photoshoot styling. But have you ever considered how different colours, and even different tones of colours, make us feel? 

What’s your brand mood and vibe?

Colour is powerful and has the proven ability to affect our emotions. Just think, how a rich, vibrant yellow makes you feel.  Energetic and uplifted?  Motivated? Confident? Ready to bring on the new? Do you feel stimulated rather than soothed by the colour yellow?

Some of our responses to colour are purely due to personal likes and dislikes developed throughout life.  While other perceptions of colour are considered universal.  (Here’s an article by the London Image Institute on colour psychology if you’d like to read more). From nature to human behaviour, colour has powerful associated meanings and psychological effects.

Colour, together with texture and quality of light, can be used to great effect in aesthetics, styling and photography to make us feel something. (For all you fellow design lovers, take a look at how Copenhagen-based interior design studio, “File Under Pop”, artfully uses colour to create connection between spaces and an individual’s essential emotions, here.)

How do different colours make us feel?

Different colours and different tones of the same colour all evoke different emotions. When you combine an artistic eye with art colour theory and colour psychology, your brand photography photoshoot becomes more intentional.  And it doesn’t have to be hit-you-between-the-eyes kind of intentional.  Even the subtlest of effects in the feelings that colour can evoke impacts our overall receptiveness to something. Affecting the way we feel when we see an image. Even if we’re merely glancing at it as we scroll.

Getting to the colourful heart of your brand mood.

Your brand photoshoot styling needs to feel unique to you and how you want your ideal clients to feel about your brand. You want your brand to convey certain feelings and reactions in people the moment they interact with it. That’s why getting to the heart of how your brand should feel is the strategy we begin with when planning your Signature Brand Session.  And along with textures, styling, and quality of light, etc, colour certainly has a part to play in how your brand makes others feel. 

How colour helps tell your visual stories.

The discerning use of colour in your brand photoshoot styling and creative direction can even subtly add another level to how your brand in perceived. It’s one of the most useful elements in a stylist’s tool kit to tell a visual story.  And colour, together with other photographic considerations like composition, light and framing, is key when uncovering your visual brand stories in our planning session. 

Does it add to your visual story? Or detract from it?

Every styling element in your brand photoshoot should have a reason to be there.  It adds to your story.  It never competes or distracts.  I always recall the famous Coco Chanel advice to remove one accessory before you leave the house! Less is often more. And when styling your photoshoot, what is left out is often just as crucial to the overall mood of an image as what is included. (Use of pure black is always a measured consideration for me, as you’ll find out further along).

All the little details come together with beautiful ease to invite us in, create a mood, and make your ideal client really feel something. Colour is often the first element of an image that is noticed – consciously or not – other than the subject itself.

Is your brand vibe down-to-earth, intentional and calm?  Soft clear blues, muted earth tones, and paler colours might be the obvious choice. But if you’d like to create a sense of innovation and joy amongst the calm, there’s even a tone of yellow that will be in harmony with a serene brand aesthetic.  And you might just be open to layering a pale soft yellow amongst your main styling elements to bring an added sense of vitality and happiness to the photograph. Notice the subtle pop of joy that the orchid centres and watercolour artwork brings in the otherwise serene blue scene above. And the deep moody tones come from browns, timbers, burnished golds and charcoal rather than from the harshness or jarring starkness that use of pure black might bring.

Same colour, different tone, different perception.

Similarly, red is most often associated with outgoing, passionate, and stand-out-from-the-crowd qualities.  But in it’s softer, more muddy and muted tones, red can add a sense of momentum and energy to your overall styling.  Using deep rust red or a muted pink can temper the sometimes stark contrasty vibrance of green plants in an interior set up for instance.  It grounds the green and offers a sense of quiet security and earthiness to the set up. Or the use of a clearer pinkish red can summon the feeling of sweetness and sincerity.

Styling is where my love and understanding of artistic colour theory and colour psychology principles can get a bit nerdy! But there’s no denying that they bring that little something extra to your brand colour palette and image collection. Most times it’s without it being totally obvious as to why you feel a certain way when looking at a photograph.

My home is a balance between pure, intense, joyful colour, and neutral, light-bouncing white and moody charcoal. But, for those who lean towards the current neutral bright trend and boho coastal vibe, don’t fear, my studio is a blank canvas of chalky white walls, bleached oak floors, and luminous white linens!

How I style your Signature Branding Photoshoot Session.

My love of design, art and colour are very much an essential starting point for my styling of your brand photography. And don’t worry, there’s no workload for you – I design your photoshoot from our planning conversations, moodboards, and a little research into your brand. This is all an intrinsic part of my process so that you have images that are not only en pointe for you and your brand, and look stunning, but are intended to bring you results. I just keep coming back to that winning combination of strategy and creativity.

“Shanon’s styling is excellent, quirky, and interesting. Her use of colour is superb.”

George Seper – photographer, author, educator.

I absolutely love incorporating my knowledge of colour into my clients’ photoshoot design. Handpainting backdrops, sourcing and advising on wardrobe, props or soft furnishing pieces, the exact shape and colour of vase and flowers to resonate with a brand’s aesthetic, and creating bespoke contemporary setups to showcase your brand stories, goes hand-in-hand with the creative joy I find in my photography itself.

When you experience a Signature Branding Session with me, you’ll love the creativity and the intentional thinking behind every part of the process. From getting clear about what sets you and your brand apart, to planning how to convey this in images, to creative direction of your photoshoot, attention to detail in styling, posing, and composition, and professional individual editing of each of your images. I give you an experience of being photographed that will both have you riding a creative high, and bring ease and results to your business.

You’re covered.

I take the sting out of doing a lot of the planning work so that you can get on with doing what you do best in your business. So whether you already have an idea of what your brand needs, or you’d value a deep dive into your brand to get clear about how to represent your brand visually, there’s a brand photography session that can be customised to exactly what you need. 

Big or small. Full blown or dip-your-toes-in-the-branding-water.  A photoshoot all your own, or share the experience with a friend. Photography specifically for your website or a campaign launch. Or updated business profile portraits that connect.

Come take a closer look at The Brand Studio website. 

And as you walk your way through my online home for my own brand, I hope you feel welcomed, inspired, motivated, and confident that your own brand can reach a similar sense of ease and beauty.

Take your time. Stay awhile.

Take in my deliberate styling choices using colour in all it’s tones. Pale, bold, muted and light, to natural and soft. How do you feel as you click your way through the various pages on my website?

Does the branding session page ignite a sense of what’s creatively possible, and have you feeling understood, secure and supported? Does my ‘about me’ page instill a sense of quiet confidence, exceptional care, and trust in all the value that I can bring you? Colour has it’s little part to play in your initial sense of this! And I’d love to apply the same attention to detail to styling your brand photoshoot.

Let yourself imagine how beautiful images created with intention and creativity could bring your brand to life.