Infographic - What Your Brand Colors Say About Your Business

Understanding the associations that people may have relative to your brand colors can help you better use color to shape a strong brand for your business.

Brand Color Theory: How Consumer Perception is Influenced by Your Brand Colors

When it comes to color and branding, have you ever noticed how the organizations in certain industries seem to have similar brand colors? Use of color in branding is not incidental – but purposeful – and based on studies, science and nature.

Pantone color expert Leatrice Eisemann notes that color “…stimulates and works synergistically with all of the senses, symbolizes abstract concepts and thoughts, expresses fantasy or wish fulfillment, recalls another time or place and produces an aesthetic (pertaining to beauty or good taste) or emotional response.” For more on messages and meanings of brand colors by this author, check out Color – Messages and Meanings.

In marketing, color has power. It can not only produce aesthetic or emotional responses or recall, it can also work like a magnet to draw the eye by differentiating one item from another or making one item “pop” out from its setting.

If you have never studied the meanings of color as it pertains to your brand colors, it is well-worth taking some time to understand how color contributes to your overall brand in the minds of your target audiences.

Color Emotion Guide Infographic - brand colors
Using the Color Emotion Guide created by thelogocompany.net, let’s take a look at the main color groups and the meanings commonly associated with them.

As you review the meanings commonly associated with each color by US consumers, think about the visual elements of your own small business brand identity, and the messages that your brand’s colors could be sending customers and prospects – whether you know it or not!

What Emotions are Your Brand Colors Triggering?

YELLOW

  • sunshine, light and its accompanying warmth
  • imagination, enlightenment, clarity, cleanliness
  • energetic and cheerful or mellow and soft
  • the easiest color for the eye to see, it’s a great color to use in POP and other displays because the eye notes highly reflective yellow before noticing any other color

ORANGE

  • the ‘hottest’ of all colors in temperature – orange is distinctly energetic
  • associated with fall foliage and sunsets
  • though intense, doesn’t insist on being taken too seriously – playful, gregarious, extroverted, happy and childlike
  • may be preferred by kids ages 3-6 and adolescents
  • has some of the drama of red tempered with the happy nature of yellow

RED

  • seductive, provocative, associated with being ‘sexy’ or passionate
  • believe it or not, the color red actually produces a physical response – stimulates the pituitary gland and sends a chemical message to your adrenal medulla, releasing epinephrine
  • the phrase “seeing red” may have some validity; it can cause you to breathe more rapidly, increase your blood pressure, pulse rate, heartbeat and flow of adrenaline and GSR (or galvanic skin response)
  • inextricably connected in the mind to excitement and high energy, may rise to the level of aggressive
  • can also be a ‘stopper’ color as in nature and in society, is often associated with danger, places that are off limits or simply the signal to stop

PURPLE

  • sensual and spiritual, somewhat feminine
  • as a blend of passionate, unpredictable red and dependable blue, purple’s complexity may make it one of the least popular colors
  • depending on hue and saturation, may be associated with spirituality, royalty, riches and the sweetness of berries from cool lavender to a nearly pinkish hue

BLUE

  • strong, dependable, reliable, trustworthy – often the brand color choice for financial institutions and other businesses that want to be seen as stable and trustworthy
  • associated with sky and water, perceived as a constant
  • restful; it’s cool temperature calms and soothes
  • the color of choice for doctors and nurses in hospitals, an excellent choice when you want people to be able to focus and concentrate or for products that have soothing, calming benefits

GREEN

  • the human eye can perceive more hues of green than any other color, making it the most versatile in offering the widest array of choices for use in branding and marketing
  • associated with mother earth, nature, foods, growth and health
  • associated with money and prestige, peace, security and safety

NEUTRALS

  • stability, time and antiquity
  • “classic,” safe and non-offensive
  • white – purity, simplicity, clarity, cleanliness – but can also be stark; friendliest when skewed to the warm side (think “vanilla”)
  • light to medium – the most non-committal of all colors
  • as grays approach black, take on more of black’s power and presence
  • black – mystery, night; powerful, dramatic, elegant, expensive – but can be ominous or overpowering

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  1. […] can use color to reinforce visual elements of your brand identity, such as your logo, in more than one way. Yes, you can tie your brand’s logo and titles to one […]

  2. […] colors to evoke the mood you want. Orange, red, and yellow evoke a sense of excitement, while cool colors like blue and […]

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