“You don’t have to like a color. You just have to determine if it is doing what you need it to do.” – Laura Silverman, Communications consultant.
Color is a very powerful tool which can assist you in positioning your brand identity strategy. A school bus in any color other than yellow is not really a school bus. As consumers we depend on the familiarity of Coca-Cola’s red cans and UPS trucks that are brown. A person doesn’t really have to read the word “facebook” to determine that blue website is facebook.
In the sequence of visual perception, our brains usually read the color first before registering a shape or read the content. Choosing a color for a new business identity requires a core understanding of color theory, a clear vision of how the brand needs to be perceived and differentiated, and ability to master consistency and meaning over a broad range of media.
When designing a brand identity, color is used to induce emotions, articulate personality, and stimulate brand association. Color can influence our actions and how we respond to various people, things and ideas. While some colors are used to develop an identity, other colors may be used functionally to clarify brand architecture through differentiating products or business lines. Designers usually formulate unique color combinations to strategize and develop the brand positioning. Traditionally, the primary brand color is assigned to a symbol and secondary color is assigned to a logotype or slogan. In addition to the core brand colors, differentiating colors are used to assist with broad range of communication needs, think businessweek.com.
The ultimate goal is to OWN a color, a color that facilitates recognition and builds brand identity. According to the book Designing Brand Identity, sixty percent of the decision to buy a product is based on color!
Following are the common association of colors in western culture:
|Red||Passion, Anger, Vigor, Love, Danger||Yellow||Knowledge, Energy, Joy, Intellect, Youth|
|Green||Fertility, Wealth, Healing, Success, Growth||White||Purity, Healing, Perfection, Clean, Virtue|
|Blue||Knowledge, Trust, Tranquility, Calm, Peace, Cool||Black||Fear, Secrecy, Formal, Luxury|
|Purple||Royalty, Wisdom, Spirituality, Imagination||Orange||Creativity, Invigoration, Unique, Stimulation|
|Gray||Passion, Anger, Vigor, Love, Danger||Yellow||Knowledge, Energy, Joy, Intellect, Youth|
|Green||Balance, Sophistication, Neutrality, Uncommitted||White||Purity, Healing, Perfection, Clean, Virtue|