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Is Your Business Color-Blind? - Mash Bonigala

Guest post by: Mash Bonigala

Article Overview: If your company is like many others, you may have chosen your color palette based on what you personally find pleasing. While your opinion as a small business owner certainly matters, color can be not just a pretty visual, but a subconscious way of communicating with and invoking emotion in your customers. Here are the colors most often used in logo design and business brands, along with what they convey. By understanding the power of color in logo design, you can make logo and branding decisions that help ensure the future viability of your company.

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Is Your Business Color-Blind? - Mash Bonigala

If your company is like many others, you may have chosen your color palette based on what you personally find pleasing. While your opinion as a small business owner certainly matters, color can be not just a pretty visual, but a subconscious way of communicating with and invoking emotion in your customers. Here are the colors most often used in logo design and business brands, along with what they convey. By understanding the power of color in logo design, you can make logo and branding decisions that help ensure the future viability of your company.
  • Red. This color is bold, attention grabbing, and even a little dangerous. While using red in a logo certainly draws in the eye, use it wisely. In addition to making people feel agitated, the color red also can have negative connotations with blood and body fluids. Medical and health fields should use this color sparingly if at all.
  • Orange. Orange is a fun and playful color with energy to spare. It draws attention in a similar manner as red, but is just a little more subdued and definitely less angry. Orange is a color often associated with sunlight, flowers, and fruit. However, it is often used in warning signs, so it may make your customers feel just a little unsafe.
  • Yellow. This color is associated with sunlight and flowers, therefore with growth and warmth. It is bright enough to draw the eye in, but rarely so bright it feels like an annoyance. However, it also is used in warning signs as well as in traffic lights, so use this bright and beautiful hue in small splashes.
  • Green. From plant life to the ecology movement, this color has generally positive and natural associations. Because of the connection to plants, the color green also is seen as representing both health and growth. The use of green in the standard stoplight adds a further feeling of safety. Obviously this is a good choice for logos of companies trying to portray themselves as natural or ‘green’.
  • Blue. What could be more calming than a broad blue sky or serene blue water? Blue makes people feel relaxed and soothed, which is why it is used so often in the logos of companies offering services and products designed to solve a problem. Psychologists have also found that the color blue inspires trust more than other colors, making it a good choice for all small businesses.
  • Purple. This color is somewhat of a paradox. On one hand, purple is a color traditionally worn by royalty and thus associated with wealth and higher social class. Both of these would make it an excellent color choice for logos offering a luxury experience. On the other hand, it is associated in our times with activism and alternative lifestyles as well.
  • Pink. Pink is merely light red, but it has very different connotations of femininity and innocence. A light pink brings classic femininity and girlhood to mind, while hot pinks are more representative of modern girls and carry some of the attention getting power of red.
Another thing to consider when choosing colors is the broad topic of cultural differences. People tend to see colors and just about everything through the unique and not always accurate lens of the community in which they grew up. For this reason, pay close attention not just to the archetypical meaning of color, but to its meaning in your particular community.
Does this attention to detail seem a little silly? In actuality, it simply isn’t. Color has been found to have a strong emotional and even physical affect on people. By harnessing this power, you are bringing yourself one step closer to small business success.

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Article Tags: brand color, business brands, color, color in marketingsmall business owner, color palette, color scheme, colors, decisions, emotion, logo design, logo design color, viability

About the Author: Mash Bonigala
RSS for Mash's articles - Visit Mash's website

Mallesh Bonigala, an entrepreneur since 1999, specializes in logo design, graphic design, branding, website design and content management applications.

Click here to visit Mash's website Dashed Line

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