What Does Color Mean for your Brand?

Branding your company and/or product can be an intimidating venture especially in today’s visual marketplace. Your brand communicates the ‘idea’ of your business with clients and prospects, and like it or not, a company’s brand and color are inextricably linked.

Color offers consumers an instantaneous method for conveying meaning and message without words. When building a brand, it’s important to take into account the way people interpret color. Color is the visual component people remember most about a brand, followed closely by shapes/symbols, then numbers and finally words.

Science has proven that color influences consumer’s emotions. That’s why you must remember to consider your business’ values and be clear on what emotions you want your brand to convey when designing the look and feel of your logo, web presence, or other design pieces. How can your brand show creativity, for example?

The psychoanalyst Carl Jung famously said that ‘colors are the mother tongue of the subconscious.’ Understanding the psychology of color and the associations that people in western cultures have relative to certain colors is one way that you can take a more objective approach when it comes to designing crucial elements of your visual brand identity. Consciously and consistently using color psychology can lead to increased sales, more memorable impressions and a stronger brand identity.

Think about brands like Facebook, Home Depot and Coca-Cola. Each has a unique color associated with its brand and more than likely, you would be able to identify each company based solely on its color.

Next, consider your brand as a whole. What do the colors you use say about the brand? Are your marketing materials consistent with their use of color?

This infographic from The Logo Company, helps illustrate the psychology of color theory with examples of famous brands from across the globe. Do you want clients and prospects to view your company as bold and youthful? Purple may be an appropriate color for you then.

Psychologists have proven color can increase brand recognition by up to 80%, further driving home the point that choosing the right color is crucial in determining how your brand is viewed. Take the time to look at how some of the worlds most famous brands utilize color within their logos that intrinsically tie-in with the overall brand strategy.