In the world of marketing, color choice plays an important role in branding. When one of our clients is looking to rebrand, or are starting from scratch, the colors chosen for the logo, business cards, website design, social media campaign can be just as important as the information included!
Why Color Choice Matters When It Comes to Branding
We previously covered Tips For Building a Brand Identity, and touched on the importance of selecting brand colors, but thought it would be helpful to take a deeper dive into the topic. Colors can evoke emotions, cause powerful reactions and actions, and sway thinking, so it’s important to understand the emotional meanings attached to colors. When starting a new company and designing marketing materials like your logo and website, you may be inclined to pick your favorite colors to represent your brand, but that may not be a good choice. While most people may not realize it or simply don’t pay attention to it, color has an impactful subconscious effect on our lives, and understanding color meanings in business can be an invaluable tool in subliminally sending messages to customers and clients. No matter the size or niche of your business, it’s important to be actively concerned about your branding, and something as simple as picking the colors to represent your brand can have a lasting impact on the success of your business!
Color Meanings for Your Branding Materials
What do your brand’s colors say about your business? Do they invoke trust? Do they appeal to youthful generations? Entice consumers to make a purchase? Read on to find out!
1. Red Color Psychology
Red in marketing materials can capture attention, and is associated with excitement, power, passion, energy, action, love, and danger. The color red can also entice appetite, which is why brands like Coca Cola use it in their branding materials. If you want to increase self-confidence use red, and red is also great for call-to-action buttons like “buy now” or “click here.” Notice how YouTube uses red in their logo for the play button – it encourages users to want to press play on their videos.
2. Yellow Color Psychology
Yellow, like sunshine, is associated with happiness, joy, optimism, cheerful feelings and energy, as well as intellect. A small touch of yellow on a website can help visitors to associate your business with something positive. Many brands use yellow to promote children’s products (iconic golden arches, anyone?), and it should be noted that men perceive yellow as very lighthearted so it shouldn’t be used to brand high-end, expensive items to men.
3. Orange Color Psychology
Orange, a cross between red and yellow, can add a bit of fun or playfulness to any website, picture, logo, or other marketing materials. As an energetic, warm, vibrant color, it’s a color used by adventurous risk-takers and extroverts. The psychology of orange when it comes specifically to marketing denotes it as affordable, creative, youthful, and light-hearted, and may drive the appetite like red and yellow. Too much orange can suggest cheapness, so be sure to use it subtly to send messages of affordability without venturing into cheapness.
4. Pink Color Psychology
When it comes to color psychology, the meaning of the color pink revolves around notions of femininity, playfulness, calming, compassion, sweetness, and naiveté. Pink can be a popular color for brands that primarily serve a female audience so it’s no surprise that pale pink is used for brands like Victoria’s Secret and Barbie. On the other hand, brighter pinks can represent practicality, universal harmony, imagination, confidence, and energy.
5. Purple Color Psychology
Purple is the color of royalty, so it suggests wealth, nobility, extravagance, luxury, and power. It can also denote wisdom and spirituality, but some perceive it as arrogant or frustrating. For businesses looking to brand themselves as high-quality or superior, and can also be used to effectively market to younger markets as they see the color as sexy and rebellious, or sophisticated and powerful.
6. Blue Color Psychology
Blue is usually associated with the color of the sky and the ocean, so in color psychology, it invokes feelings of stability, harmony, calm, trust, honesty, and peace. However, blue can also carry some negative color meanings such as depression or coldness. To strengthen confidence, many retailers use blue for their trust certification, free shipping icons, or guarantee. Blue works really well for corporate businesses, and for conservative businesses like accountants, banks, and insurance companies.
7. Green Color Psychology
Green is highly connected to both nature and money. Some of the positive color psychology connections are health, healing, growth, generosity, and fertility. Also, it can suggest something new and “fresh.” Conversely, green can also be associated with negative emotions such as envy and selfishness. If your business deals with health, fitness, and healing, lighter shades of green are great colors to use for branding materials. Darker shades of green are awesome branding colors for financial and money websites.
8. Black Color Psychology
For retail, black is a popular color to use. In color psychology, black is associated with power, elegance, authority, sophistication, and mystery, but also with anger, sadness, intimidation, and unapproachability. For text in logos, it’s a popular color because it’s easy to read. Black is often favored among younger markets for its sophistication and sleekness.
9. White Color Psychology
White is connected to feelings of innocence, cleanliness, humility, and goodness. Think of white as a color of new beginnings, or as “wiping the slate clean,” so to speak. It’s not necessarily stimulating, but paves the way for creativity as a blank canvas. For ecommerce sites, white is used a lot as it’s the best background when paired black text for readability. Too much white, however, can invoke feelings of coldness, disinterest, and detachment.
If you need some help with building a brand identity or better incorporating your existing brand identity into your website or beyond, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d be happy to help evaluate the messages your branding materials are sending to your customers, and we can help redesign or re-imagine your brand to better reach your target audiences.
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