Colour is a highly important part of the branding process, as something that needs to be reflected and consistent through all communications of a brand.
After creating and producing a new visual tool that showed the colour usage in the top 50 UK law firms, we wanted to extend this to show the top 50 barristers’ chambers. This would allow for a good amount of comparison between the two legal service markets, while also identifying trends and opportunities with their colour usage.
What we did
Tela looked at the colours used on the top 50 barristers’ chambers websites in order to compare the variation, with the aim of gaining an insight into how barristers’ chambers were using their brand colours online. It also opened up the opportunity to identify any usage gaps in the colour spectrum and luminosities. It was important to establish the colours that were trending in the industry, while finding out what colours and tones were not as popular.
After taking screenshots of each of the top 50 barristers’ chambers home pages, an online tool was used to calculate the top ten colours used on each. This information was then entered into a database that is used to create the interactive tool that displays the usage of each colour on each of the top 50 barristers chambers websites.
How it works
The tool displays all of the top 50 barristers’ chambers website colours on one screen. You can also show individual barristers chambers’ colours by filtering the ‘view by barristers chamber’. This allows for some basic comparisons between the firm and industry.
What the results show
The colour wheel shows some clear trends among barristers’ chambers websites. The colours are much more toned down and appear almost pastel in some areas. Tones of blue is clearly a popular choice, while various shades of green seem to be less, with less websites using them in the design.
The visual tools we have created allows for comparisons and differences to be identified between the colour use on the websites of the top 50 barristers’ chambers and top 50 law firms. Both visual representations show a solid use of blues and greys, with barristers’ chambers using a slightly darker range of blue tones. However, when looked at closely, it becomes clear that the barristers’ chambers website offer more muted colours compared to the vibrant ones used on the law firms’ websites.
In terms of opportunities for barristers chambers’ and law firm websites to stand out, the colour wheel shows that both legal services are not using shades of green. Barristers chambers’ show that they use a couple of darker green tones, but overall the use of the colour is rare. This is the same for different tones of purple. While darker shades are used for both barristers chambers and law firms, lighter shades are very uncommonly used in website design.
Have you seen our post on the Top 50 UK Law Firms’ Website Colour Usage?
