How to Create Seasonal Color Palettes

This post was inspired by a recent visit to Starbucks to pick up a Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew. 

While I was in Starbucks, I noticed all the subtle ways that they had updated their color palette for the fall season.

• 🤎 The drink menu had a creamy caramel background color.
• 🍁 The cups had a muted, fall palette (think: dusty greens, maroons, terracottas).
• 🎃 The gift cards had pumpkins and rust-colored leaves.

When I got home, I pulled up their brand guidelines (an admittedly creepy move, but I LOVE to creep on big brands’ guidelines). It confirmed something that I knew to be true which is:

Starbucks updates their color palette every single season.

Image Source: https://creative.starbucks.com/color/

And (lucky for you!) it’s a totally repeatable strategy.

If you want to have a color palette that you can update throughout the year, here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Create a base color palette

2. Choose a structure for your bonus palettes

3. Create your bonus color palettes

1. Create a base color palette

If you want to be able to ‘play’ with your color palette throughout the years/seasons/collections, you’ll want to have a strong base color palette. This should be 5-8 colors that uniquely identify your brand.

Starbucks is a great example to follow: their base color palette has 8 colors: 4 variations of their iconic ‘Starbucks green’, and 4 neutrals (1 black color, 2 beige colors, and 1 white color). These colors work for Starbucks year round.

Here’s a good formula for a base color palette:

• 1 hero color
• 3 variations of that hero color (maybe some lighter tints or darker shades)
• 2-3 simple neutrals (think: black, white, beige, grey, etc.)

 
2. Choose a structure for your bonus palettes

Now that you’ve created a base color palette, you can have some FUN and start to create some bonus color palettes.

Your first step? Choose a structure for your bonus palettes. Here are some options:

• Seasonal: for brands that want to update their color palettes each season (Examples: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter)
• Holiday: for brands that want to update their color palettes for each major holiday (Examples: Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Diwali, New Years Eve)
• Product: for brands that want to update their color palettes for each product or collection that they offer (Example: Taylor Swift updating her website color palette based on each album that she’s promoting)
• Events: for brands that want to update their color palette based on specific events or monuments (Examples: Olympics, World Cup, 4th Business Anniversary, etc.)
• Collaboration: for brands that want to update their color palette based on collaborations with other brands, celebrities, or influential figures (Example: Parade creating a red product line based on a collaboration with Coca Cola)

 
3. Create your bonus color palettes

Now that you’ve created a base color palette and selected a structure for your palettes, you can start to create your first bonus color palette!

Here are some things to keep in mind when you create your bonus color palettes:

• You will still use colors from your base palette, no matter the bonus palette. This helps to ‘anchor’ your brand’s identity.
• Your bonus color palettes can have 1-10 colors.
• Because your base color palette has built-in contrast (with those light + dark neutrals), you don’t really need to worry about contrast with your bonus color palette. Your bonus color palette can be all fun colors! 🙂

This is your graphic-designer approved permission slip to create bonus color palettes. It’s OKAY! You just gotta create your palettes the right (and strategic) way.

Go on your way! Play with color! And remember: have fun with it.