Color Psychology: The Relationship Between Color & Branding

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How does color affect our everyday life? We are bombarded with brands from sunup to sundown, but have you ever thought about what role color plays?

First, color affects us on a subconscious level. Color psychologists have found that the brain subconsciously notices color before shape and wording!

We also relate to color on a physiological level. For example, you’re driving down restaurant row, pondering the plethora of restaurant selections. At this point, your body may have already begun to react to the colors on the restaurant signage and architecture. Warms colors such as red, orange and yellow, which have been shown to accelerate heart rate and elicit hunger, are commonly utilized in the quick service and causal dining restaurant industry.

Other factors that influence color associations include marketing associations and geographical and cultural meanings. Red often represents love, anger, power and embarrassment in Western culture, while in China and India, red is more often associated with good luck.

It is important to remember that color is subjective. It is impossible to define the absolute meaning of any color, due to the number of factors that contribute to that meaning.

With their tagline “What can brown do for you?” and strong use of brown in advertisements and vehicle graphics, UPS successfully communicates reliability and stability, gaining the trust of their customers.

Tiffany & Co. has executed color well as a large part of their overall brand. In fact, Tiffany Blue is so strongly associated with the Tiffany & Co. brand that the company has protected it as a color trademark within the US and many other countries.

The European mobile network and Internet service provider, Orange, not only utilizes the color within their logo, but also uses the color as their name. The color itself is the main outlet for conveying the brand’s personality and tone, which is friendly, upbeat and unique. Other names that incorporate color include, The Red Cross, The Yellow Pages, Jet Blue, Green Day and the Indigo Girls, just to name a few.

Color can be a powerful tool for eliciting an emotional response and influencing the perceptions of a brand. What are some other brands that you feel successfully utilize color?