Color Palette and Fonts

Colour palettes and fonts do a lot of work before a single word is processed. They shape how a brand is felt in the first few seconds, whether it comes across as confident, approachable, premium, or trustworthy. Over time, these visual cues also become shortcuts for recognition. People may not remember the exact message, but they remember how the brand looked and how it made them feel.

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You can see this clearly with brands like Olly, known for its bright, optimistic colours, or Minimalist, which leans into clinical typography and restraint to signal transparency and focus. At Confetti, colour and type exploration typically takes four to six days, allowing us to test how different directions land emotionally and visually. If you want to explore what your brand should communicate at first glance, this is a conversation worth having early on with our team on a quick call.

Most brands work best with a restrained system rather than an overloaded one. Typically, that means one primary colour palette, one or two supporting palettes, and two font families that work well together. This keeps the identity flexible without becoming messy. When too many colours or typefaces are introduced, consistency starts to slip, and the brand becomes harder to recognise across different touchpoints.

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You can see the power of restraint in brands like Skims, which keeps its palette deliberately minimal to maintain a calm, premium feel across everything it puts out. At Confetti, we also go deeper by defining colours separately for digital and print, because they behave very differently in real-world use. If you’re worried about overdesigning or overcomplicating your identity, a quick call with our experts at Confetti can help sense-check what’s truly needed and what can be left out.

Colours and fonts only work if they hold up in real use, not just on a presentation slide. That’s why they need to be tested across the places they’ll actually live, from packaging and social media to websites and printed material. Many D2C brands run into trouble when colours that look great on screen fall flat on packaging, or when type that reads well digitally loses impact in print.

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At Confetti, this testing is built directly into the design phase. We define separate colour values for digital and physical use so the identity stays consistent across every touchpoint. This helps avoid unpleasant surprises once things go live. If you want to pressure-test how your colours and fonts will perform in the real world, it’s worth hopping on a call with our experts and walking through your use cases together.

Trends can be useful as reference points, but they shouldn’t be the foundation of a brand’s visual identity. Trend-led colours and typefaces tend to date quickly, which can force brands into frequent refreshes and erode recognition over time. Consistency is what builds familiarity and trust, especially when a brand is growing and needs to be recognised across many touchpoints.

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A good example is Glossier. Its look has evolved gradually over time, but it has never abandoned the visual cues that make it instantly recognisable. At Confetti, we design identity systems with a five to seven-year horizon in mind, so they can adapt without losing their core. If you’re trying to balance staying relevant with building something that lasts, a short call with our team can help you make those choices with confidence.

Colour and typography should be finalised once the logo direction is clear, but before the identity is rolled out across assets. At this stage, the brand’s visual logic is taking shape, which makes it the right moment to lock the elements that will appear everywhere. When colours and type are left too late, teams often end up revisiting work or making compromises just to keep things moving.

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Most strong D2C brands finalise these choices early for exactly that reason. It reduces rework and gives everyone a clear system to design within. At Confetti, colour and typography are typically locked by Week 2 of identity design, once direction is established, but before execution scales. If you want to make sure the order of decisions in your project is working for you rather than against you, we can help plan that sequence together in a short call.