#21: Are Your Author Brand Colors Accessible??

The colors you choose for your author brand should also reflect the tone you’re going for, and the genre(s) you write in probably have some unspoken color associations with readers as well. Should you match?

When I started looking into brand colors, I went down a rabbit hole of fantasy color trends.

🌿 Greens and purples? Love them.
🖤 Dark, moody tones? Absolutely.
🎨 But no matter what I choose—my #1 priority is accessibility.

Why Accessible Colors Matter More Than “Aesthetic” Ones

Choosing brand colors is fun—until you realize that color accessibility is a thing and suddenly, your favorite palette might be unreadable for some readers… or a LOT of readers depending on what combos you’ve picked.

Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that 2.2 billion people have some form of vision loss or impairment. 

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate approximately 6 million Americans have vision loss and 1 million have blindness–out of these, 1.6 million are younger than age 40.

If you’re not choosing optimal colors for your brand, ones with sufficient color contrast, you might be leaving out a huge number of readers simply because they can’t see your content well enough to interact with it. 

Not having sufficient color contrast is one of the biggest accessibility issues online.

I personally have little gray wibbly spots in my peripheral vision, and when websites use a ton of colors, distracting combos, or ones with insufficient contrast, it makes it really difficult for me to read. 

So, instead of picking colors based just on vibes, this is what I suggest to start: 

1. Find a palette that fits with the tone and feeling you want your brand to evoke. Vibes first!

2. But then! Run the palette through color contrast checkers and optimize your color choices to ensure they have sufficient contrast on a white or black background, against the other colors in your palette, etc. 

Pro-tip: Speaking from experience, it’s easier to start with an accessible palette when building a cohesive brand (and its accompanying website) than it is to take a brand and website with an inaccessible color scheme and modify it until it works. Working backwards is much harder, but if you already have an author website and color palette, it’s not too late! Follow these steps to ensure your website is accessible to the highest number of readers. 

How To Choose Accessible Colors for Your Author Brand

Alright, we’re going to use a few different tools for this.

So, vibes first. If you already have a palette in mind or know what colors you want, you can skip this step (just make sure you know the hex codes for each of your colors!). If you’re like me and only have a vague idea of what brand colors you want or you’re completely unsure where to start, I’ve got you.

Finding Your Vibe

1. Do your research. See what colors other authors in your genre are using for their brand.
   For example, I write YA Fantasy and sooooo many author websites use a very dark aesthetic with just a few pops of color. See what the trends are in your genre and how the colors they choose make you feel when navigating their site.

2. Think about how your brand differs from the pack and how that might affect what colors you choose.
   For example, while I write YA Fantasy and I do touch on darker themes, my books also have humor, so a totally dark aesthetic wouldn’t give me the look and feel that matches my brand. I need brighter, bolder colors to offset the dark and match how I want readers to feel when they think of my books.

3. Use color psychology resources like this one Color Symbolism to learn what emotions or feelings each color evokes in readers. See which colors might match the values and tone you’ve chosen for your author brand.

4. Once you have a slightly better idea of what colors you’re gravitating toward (or what ones you definitely want to stay away from):

1. Find a color palette generator (I like this one 🎨 Coolors Palette Generator).

2. Have it generate snazzy color combinations until you find one that matches the feeling–the tone you want to evoke with your author brand.
   Ha, one of the first ones I generated had Fairy Tale in it 😆.
   
   Note: See the image below this list for the example.
   

3. When you find a palette that might work, note down the list of colors. You see those random numbers and letters above each color’s name? Those are the hex color codes for each color. Make sure you write these down! 

4. Continue generating palettes and writing down the hex codes of each palette until you have a few that you think might work for your brand.

5. Most people stop here, choose a palette, and just go with the colors that feel good to them, but we know better! Now, we’re going to check each palette combo for accessibility so our content doesn’t leave anyone out.

Step 4.2 example.

Optimizing the Snazz and Making it Accessible 

Alright, you now have a snazzy palette or palettes that vaguely match the feelings you want readers to associate with your brand. 

Now, we need to make sure that you have enough color contrast between each color and any backgrounds you might use on your future author website and social content so readers can actually read your content. 

Note: I’ll go into much more detail on color contrast for various website elements like buttons, headings, text, etc. in later blog posts. I’m going to do a whole web accessibility techniques for your author site series within this blog. Coming soon! But for now, just know that we want to choose a color palette that gives us the highest number of accessible color contrast combinations to make building our author website and socials content easier.

To do so:

1. Choose one of the palettes you generated to start (or your preexisting list of hex color codes if you skipped the random palette generation steps).

2. Go to this site: Accessible Palette Builder.

3.  Press Edit Palette.

4. If you think you’ll use a white background on your future author website, leave the White #FFFFFF color in place (to compare each of your colors against this background). If you’d rather use a black background, keep reading.

5.  Replace the colors on the page with the colors in your generated palette. To do so:

1. Press on the bottom text box under the color you want to modify.
   
   Note: This blog won’t let me paste images inside lists 😭. See the images below the list for visual examples.
   

2. Enter the hex color code (those random-seeming letters and numbers above the color name in your generated palette) for one of your colors into the text box, like so:
   
   Note: Image example below list!
   

3. Repeat for each color in the palette. (You can ignore the color names for now. They’re just labels. We can fix them later. Right now, we’re just plopping the colors in to see if they’ll even work for accessibility.) 

4. If you think you’ll use a black background on your site, change the White FFFFFF color to a Black 000000 color now.

5. When you’re done, yours should look something like this:
   
   Note: Image example below list!
   

6. Press Save changes. 

7. Pro-tip: Bookmark the page so you can easily get back to this exact palette later without having to re-enter every hex code. 

6. Now, scroll down the page to see how many accessible color combinations you have with your palette.
   My example palette gives me 14 different combinations to choose from with 3 different text colors that will work on my white background:
   
   Note: Image example below list!
   
   Pro-tip: While you’ll never find a palette where every single color combination is accessible, the best way to get the highest number of accessible color combos is to have a mix of light and dark brand colors. 

7. Repeat the process with the other palettes you generated to see which colors give you the highest number of accessible combinations. I’d aim for at least 10 combinations that work in total (but more is better!) and 2 or more text colors that work against your white or black background. That way when you go to build (or update) your author site, you have lots of pretty color combination options to choose from. 

8. Now, what should you do if you thought you had the perfect palette (and maybe you already used it alllll over your author website) only to find out that it doesn’t have hardly any accessible combinations? Don’t panic! We can fix it:

1. Instead, you can modify the colors:

1. Go back to your palette in the Accessible Color Palette Builder site. 

2. Press Edit palette. 

3. Like I said, the easiest way to get the highest number of accessible color combos is to have a mix of light and dark brand colors. But that doesn’t mean you have to scrap all of your colors and reinvent the wheel. Instead, modify one color at a time by making it lighter or darker. If the rest of your palette leans toward lighter colors, make one or two darker. If your palette leans dark, lighten a few of them. To do so:

1. Choose a color to modify.

2. Press on the hex code box associated with the color.

3. You see that slider that appears on the side?
   
   
   Note: Image example below list!
   

4. Slide the bar up to lighten the color or down to make it darker (depending on which way you’re trying to go).

5. Press Save changes.

6. Scroll down and see if you have more color contrast combinations to work with now. 

7. Continue playing with and modifying your colors until you have enough that match your brand’s look and feel and accessible color contrast combinations.

8. Reminder: When you have a combination that works for you, be sure to bookmark the page so you can return to it later if needed!

Example Images

Step 5.1 example

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Step 5.2 example

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Step 5.5. Example

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Step 6 example

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Step 8.3.3 example

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You (Finally!) Have Accessible Brand Colors. Now What?

After much testing (and a minor existential crisis), I worked through the steps and landed on four potential color palettes. My personal plan is to:

1. Give my eyeballs a break from staring at too many colors. 

2. Eat some much needed cake.

3. Then go back and stare at my chosen palettes for a few weeks and see which one I keep gravitating toward. Because branding is a marathon, not a sprint.

And it’s completely fine if you don’t feel the palette you’ve chosen is 100% what you want to go with. Take as long as you need to play with colors and combinations until you get the feel you want–one that matches the tone you’ve laid out for your brand.

Just make sure before finalizing your choices that you come back to these steps and ensure you have enough color contrast compliant combinations to use when you start building out (or updating!) your website and social content. 

Next Steps:

1. Finalize brand colors and apply them to a website & social media

2. See what visuals and images fit with each color scheme. How do they make me feel? Does it fit with the rest of what I’m trying to do with my brand? Do the images completely wreck my careful brand color choices and I have to restart???? (Please no)

3. Start researching accessible fonts & typography

💬 Question for You: Have you ever checked if your brand colors are accessible? Try a contrast checker and let me know what you find!

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