What’s in a Color? The Impact of Color in Branding
Like it or not, people form opinions about your brand every day based of one simple thing: color. In fact, color can increase logo and brand recognition by up to 80 percent! Here are some reasons not to overlook the role of color in your branding efforts.
Colors are seen by different age groups, genders and nationalities in many different ways. For instance, orange is highly accepted by young people, while people tend to dislike orange and green the older they get. Even men and women react differently to color. Females generally respond to red better than blue, while men prefer blue over red. Yellow has a higher effective value for men.
Which colors will best represent your brand? Take a look at these interesting color facts:
Red is the ultimate power color, associated with energy, danger, strength, determination, and passion. Red brings text and images to the foreground. Use it as an accent color to stimulate people to make quick decisions.
Yellow is associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy. It produces a warming effect, arouses cheerfulness and stimulates mental activity. Yellow is often associated with food. Yellow is very effective for attracting attention, so use it to highlight the most important elements of your design.
Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, success, and endurance. Because of its high visibility, use it to catch attention and highlight the most important elements of your design.
Green symbolizes growth, harmony, freshness, and stability. It also has strong emotional correspondence with safety. Green is the most restful color for the human eye. Green is directly related to nature, so it is used more and more to promote “green” products.
Blue conveys trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, and tranquility. It is considered beneficial to the mind and body, producing a calming effect. Blue is linked to consciousness and intellect. Dark blue is a preferred color for corporate America.
Purple is associated with royalty. It symbolizes power, nobility, luxury and ambition. It conveys wealth and extravagance.
Black is associated with power, elegance, formality, death, strength, authority, and mystery. It gives the feeling of perspective and depth, but a black background diminishes readability.
Before deciding how to use color in your branding decisions, make sure you have a strong sense for your brand’s identity and messaging. Think about what mood or message you want the brand to convey before settling on a color scheme. Power? Happiness? Trust? Energy?
Need a color consultation?
Contact the experts at Tingalls Graphic Design for a free consultation.
(Information in this article was excerpted from a presentation given by Adams Outdoor Advertising.)
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