Utopia

Do you feel tranquilly calm when surrounded by green fields and blue skies? Or perhaps slightly alarmed when staring at a red stop sign?

Color has been known to have a powerful psychological impact on people’s behavior and decisions, and this knowledge has been harnessed all too well by designers and marketers alike. Color can often be the sole reason someone purchases a product, where 93% of buyers focus on visual appearance and almost 85% claim color to be their primary reason for purchase!

How do Colors Influence People?

Red – Creates a sense of urgency, which is good for clearance sales. Encourages appetite, thus is frequently used by fast-food chains. Physically stimulates the body, raising blood pressure and heart rate, associated with movement, excitement, and passion.

Blue – The preferred color of men. It’s associated with peace, water, tranquility, and reliability. Blue provides a sense of security, curbs appetite, and stimulates productivity. The most common color used by conservative brands looking to promote trust in their products.

Green – Associated with health, tranquility, power, and nature. Used in stores to relax customers and for promoting environmental issues. Green stimulates harmony in your brain and encourages a balance leading to decisiveness.

Purple – Commonly associated with royalty, wisdom, and respect. Stimulates problem solving as well as creativity. Frequently used to promote beauty and anti-aging products.

Orange & Yellow – Cheerful colors that promote optimism. Yellow can make babies cry, while orange can trigger a sense of caution. Used to create a sense of anxiety that can draw in impulsive buyers and window shoppers.

Black – Associated with authority, power, stability, and strength. Often a symbol of intelligence, but can become overwhelming if used to frequently.

Grey – Symbolizes feelings of practicality, old age, and solidarity. But too much grey can lead to feelings of nothingness and depression.

White – Associated with feelings of purity, cleanliness and safety. Can be used to project an absence of color or neutrality. White space helps spark creativity since it can be perceived as an unaltered, clean state.

Properly Using Color Theory

Use contrasts to reduce eyestrain and allow readers to focus their attention on specific items. Vibrancy can dictate the emotional response users have to your design.

For example, choosing brighter colors can lead users to feel more energetic, which can evoke better responses and reactions. But if your website is information-intensive, you may find that a darker color theme will make it easier for readers to process all your data.

How Are Major Brands Using Colors?

Source: Small Biz Trends 

Shared by: Mizanur Rahman 

It is true that something conspicuous always catches the eye of the beholder. We walk in the crowd   surrounded by on-going bustle of the city; we see what we want to see yet with different   perception. In professional domain one can never sit in the cave and acclaim to be a desirable one   for an opportunity. That’s where the question arises- Am I visible enough to be called as a brand? Am I participating virtually enough? Or, am I marketing myself in the right manner?

The hottest trend in the market right now is to create your own space somewhere, just like a brand. Indeed, it all starts with personal branding which is nothing but a self-discovery and self-indulgence. According to social media experts, it is very important to build yourself as a brand. Employers and candidates are highly co-related to each other, like peas in a pod. So, if they are not finding each other at the right time – that’s a call for SOS.

Let’s focus on a few areas which can help you form into some admirable brand -

1. Knowing yourself inside out – personal branding lets you understand your basic characteristics, personality traits and attributes. Before you lash out with specifications it is important to have a thorough understanding of your domain, interest areas, passion, strength, weaknesses and goals. It works like an internal scanner of what you believe in and want to portray to others. Be smart enough to reflect your accomplishments in relation to your personal and work front till date.

2. Setting your target – time to set your target audience, viewers, followers and future clients. Once you are clear with your personal branding essentials it is important to build your network through right virtual platform. These platforms further can be understood in the form social media platforms

3. Exploiting social media platforms – in this virtual space there are a number of platforms available for relationship building. Foremost method is to endorse yourself on LinkedIn- this can be considered as a replica of your resume but with a focus on making relationship with future possible network. After all, it is highly important to know the difference between your Resume and LinkedIn profile.

Blogging is another medium to outreach your viewers and followers with right amount of information and ideas. Keep in mind that on social media the quality of content and right usage of keywords defines the foundation of you as a brand. Likewise, other mediums like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Guest Forums – allow you to maintain the flow of desirable amount of information each comprising of different nature.

4. Stay alive – right communication and networking is an ultimate tonic to form a sustainable brand. You need to keep nurturing your network more and more with right frequency of updates, sharing and variation. Perceive it as a massive reach of your only brand in completion with a lot many others in the crowd. In the midst of focusing on what should be done, make sure you implement them in the rightest of manner –

All in all, going by the progress in personal and professional space, rising like a brand is itself a story reflection of you. In the end, a brand can never grow without an acceptance of right feedback and change. So, break the void and outshine like a brand.

Source: Aamyre Shareef

You believe in the importance of your vision, but how do you get others to stop and listen to you? There will be many instances when you don’t have a lot of time to grab someone’s attention, be it a potential investor or a licensee. That’s why you need to be able to summarize the benefit of your business idea in a single, powerful sentence -- a sentence that is so direct and compelling, it stops whoever reads or hears it dead in their tracks. A good one-line benefit statement should make someone think: "I want to know more about that."

I’ve learned that if I craft just the right sentence, it’s all I need to get people to listen to my pitch, open my emails and answer my calls. I still remember the day the iPod launched and Steve Jobs called it “a thousand songs in your pocket.” Wow. That's captivating. He didn’t have to explain any further. We wanted it already! 

People don’t care about how something works.They want to know what it’s going to do for them.

Newspapers, tabloids, and these days, Twitter have been making use of the headline for years. How often do you find yourself on a webpage you never intended to visit, all because a headline was so tempting, you had to click on it? That should give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Creating excellent one-line benefit statements isn’t an easy skill, but it’s an important one, because it can be used to explain your idea in so many different kinds of situations in an attractive, successful way.

Sometimes, you only get one chance to make an impression. Cut through the clutter to make it count! Here three ways to create an awesome one-line benefit statement:

1. Make it emotional.
Why should people care about what you have to say? Grab them with something they can relate to. Benefits sell ideas, not facts. What is your idea going to do for the consumer or the world? Don’t be afraid to use emotion. People are motivated by their emotions more often than they are motivated by reason. Emotion also evokes visual imagery -- if people can begin to see your idea, that’s a good thing. Some emotional words include: "free", "incredible" and "unbelievable."

2. Keep it short.
Like -- really short. I’m talking no more than 10 to 12 words, ideally less. Remember, you don’t have much time. If your statement is too long, people may move on before they’ve even finished reading or hearing it. Don’t be intimidated by using fewer words. This is a really good exercise in general. Too often, I ask an inventor or entrepreneur to tell me about his or her idea and I’m overwhelmed with a five-minute speech. "What is he talking about again?" I find myself thinking. I’m not even sure. Brevity forces clarity.

3. Use numbers.
Numbers convey specificity. Look around you. Headlines with numbers dominate our world. One has only to look at Buzzfeed to understand the power of numbers.

Here are some examples of one-line benefit statements my students and I have used with great success in the past:

Try out potential statements on everyone you know. Which one has the greatest impact? Ask for feedback. Then, start using this line all over the place. When someone asks: “So what is it you’re working on again?” you will have a great answer!

Source: Stephen Key