Why do businesses use certain colours for their logo? Why is there prominent use of specific colours in different industries and what is the underlying meaning behind the colour choice? When a company uses a specific colour or colours for their logo, usually there is a psychological reason behind even if most don’t realise it. For example, blue is heavily used for logos. Blue has a psychological association with water and the sky, and then an association with that leaves a feeling of limitlessness. Productivity ties in with this as well. It conjures up feelings of steadiness.
Modern examples of this colour in use are the three major social networking platforms; Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. In a yougov.com survey Blue turned out to be the favourite colour of various nations and of each gender.
Blue is widely used for its ability to be seen by the colour blind as well. Mark Zuckerberg used the colour blue for the Facebook logo and branding as he himself is colour blind. Speaking on the subject, Zuckerberg says “blue is the richest color for me — I can see all of blue.” Other colours and the emotions/thoughts they instil in you;
Green Green is associated with money. Nature is a common theme with green, making it a tranquil colour that is commonly used for hinting at growth and good health. Purple Purple is linked with power and wisdom. A colour that has ties with royalty, with many kings wearing purple robes. Red Red is a colour that, when you consider it is used to be opposing to blue and the boldness of it, should be less in use as it could be a risky choice. However, risks pay off and red draws out emotion in people more so than most colours. The colour is used frequently is the food industry as red has been shown to increase our heart rate and possibly boost our appetite. Of course red has been used so much (McDonalds & KFC as examples) in the restaurant sector that you could automatically associate with food anyway. Red has been deliberately put to use for the title banner for this blog, completely different to our usual company branding. Red is frequently used to draw people’s attention and black and white are two basic colours that show up well against a red backdrop. If you look at our logo, we use blue and green and this is also carried through to our software logos. Reliability and growth are the ethos of the company and we are conveying this through branding and design.
To conclude this, a research paper by Satyendra Singh at the University of Winnipeg gives a stark statistic on the importance of colour use…
“Color is ubiquitous and is a source of information. People make up their minds within 90 seconds of their initial interactions with either people or products. About 62‐90 percent of the assessment is based on colors alone.” It’s certainly something to think about.