What Color is Your Company’s Logo?

Although I’m not a graphic designer (maybe a wannabe), corporate visual identity has always fascinated me. Whether you’re working at a start-up company, or creating a campaign, or selecting new product packaging – hoping for a unique and inspiring look and feel, remember the colors you select matter to your customers. Much more than you think. Certain colors make your consumers feel emotions and how they are tightly or loosely connected toward your company’s identity can strengthen the brand or be an inadvertent disconnect.

I found this interesting infographic published back in 2013 (many of you may have already seen it) presenting “the emotions and qualities” (Marketingtechblog, 2013) of well-known brands across the globe.  It looks pretty accurate.  Taco Bell is pretty creative, imaginative and wise. Just see this Doritos Locos Tacos ad and wise for eliminating green onions permanently from their menu as a result of its Coli crises.

Source: MarketingtechBlog.com

Hynes (2009) states that corporate visual identity helps establish and maintain a company’s central corporate image and the company’s color and design of its logo is a central component.  This triadic relationship between color, design and logo and vigorous consumer marketing communications evoke meaning and contribute to building a consistent corporate brand (Hynes, 2009).

The Guide reminded me of a very recent mistake I made managing a design project to create a logo and identity for a program.  I completely forgot to take time and think about how color psychology plays an important part in logo design, brand identity and (company) brand reinforcement.  It’s too late for my program since that cart (before the horse) has already left the stable. But, maybe not too late for your next effort.  The jury is still out on the results of my program.

Resources:

Hynes, N. (2009). Colour and meaning in corporate logos: An empirical study. Journal of Brand Management, 16(8), 545-555. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/bm.2008.5

Karr, D. (2013, May 8). Color emotion guide. MarketingTechBlog.com. Retrieved, Sepetmeber 25, 2014, from http://www.marketingtechblog.com/color-emotion/