Colors are an essential element of logo design. And no doubt, plays a crucial role in branding. Users only look at a logo for 1-10 seconds and create a first impression about your brand.
You might be thinking how one is supposed to grab a user’s attention if they won’t look at your logo for more than 10 seconds. That’s where color psychology comes into the picture.
Around 90% of the first impressions are linked to how a user recognize the color in a given situation. Colors, indeed, evoke feelings and influence people’s behavior. This process is known as color psychology in graphics design domain.
Brands go for colors that describe their message clearly. There’s no magic formula that helps you select the right shades or hues. Instead, you need to understand the core values of your business and which emotions you want to evoke.
Biggest brands choose colors as:
- 29% red
- 33% blue
- 13% yellow or gold
- 28% black, grey and silver
So, if you’re about to choose a color palette for your logo, read on!
Blue Logos
Many marketers and brands prefer to use blue color in logos for its trustworthiness and seriousness. Both attributes are essential for any company. More so, blue logos depicts honesty and security, and can develop trust factor between a business and customers.
If you’ve decided to go for a blue logo, focus on two things. First, many brands have used it already, so you need to find a way to make it innovative and stand out in the crowd. Second, blue color tend to make a brand look cold and unfriendly, so evoking the type of emotions or feelings you want can be problematic.
Associated with trust and confidence, blue color is quite famous for IT, healthcare, transport, and healthcare industries. On the flipside, social media outlets, such as Twitter, Skype and Facebook also opted for blue color for dependability, strength, and trustworthiness.
Red Logos
Universally used to display excitement, passion and anger, red is ideal if you’re up to transmit the feelings of power and energy using your brand. For loud and youthful businesses, red color can make the right choice to dominate the industry.
It becomes easier to capture the attention of target audience and keep them engaged with a visually interesting design. Being an identifiable color, red is quite common in food and beverage industry. See how KFC and Coca-cola have used the red in their respective logos.
Apart from evoking emotions like power, excitement, and passion, it can stimulate the feeling of urgency, which is why you can use it in the marketing campaigns to your advantage. The best way to use red color in your logo is to combine it with white, black, or other neutral colors to create an aesthetically-pleasing color scheme.
Green Logos
Human eyes are sensitive to green color, and can differentiate between the shades of green easily. Logos with green color are connected with growth and rebirth, and transmit the emotions of harmony and balance.
Moreover, green is also considered as the color of nature. That’s why many environmentally-friendly brands and products go for green as their brand color.
In the logo design domain, green color has different traits depending on the culture. For example, it’s the color of money and wealth in the US. Popular brands like Starbucks and Lacoste have green in their logos.
Yellow Logos
A warm yet bright color – yellow is perfect to transfer the feelings of friendliness and happiness. You can even associate it with summer and sunshine. So, as a brand, if you want to achieve the vibes of youthful energy, incorporate yellow into your logo design.
Yellow is also a primary color in the subtractive color system. An interesting fact about yellow is that it’s one of the first colors that human beings mixed and used on their paintings.
However, you need to be a little cautious while using it for your logo, as it suggests bargain or cheap products. If you’re a higher-end brand, it might not be the best color choice. In this scenario, you can think about gold, as it exudes power and luxury. Some famous brands who have yellow in their logos are McDonalds, Lays, and Shell.
Orange Logos
Is your brand innovative and playful? If so, use orange in your logo to make it stand out in the niche. It’s an energetic color that also attracts viewer’s attention, evokes feelings of cheerfulness and enthusiasm.
While working with it, focus on the tone of orange you use for your logo design. Because, opting for a bright orange tone can be harsh on the eyes. Which is why brands often go for peachier tones and avoid adverse effects of bright yellow in the eye. This step also helps them with eye-catching effects of orange.
More so, if you’re looking for something in the middle of red and yellow, orange can do the job for you. Brands also go for it not only for its warmth, but they achieve the feelings of freshness and excitement. To make the most of orange color, use it with neutral colors to balance the contrast.
It makes an excellent color choice for entertainment, food, beverage companies, such as Fanta, Firefox, and Soundcloud.
Purple Logos
Purple and violet tones are generally associated with royalty and luxury. So, if your brand deals with higher-end products, purple is surely your color. Purple is connected with spirituality, creativity, fantasy, extravagance, and sophistication.
It’s true that logos with purple hues appear powerful and garner user’s attention. Using it is also a great way to incorporate the feel of luxury when it’s combined with gold. It can even elevate the aesthetics of packaging. Take Cadbury chocolate for an example. Customers associate it with a good quality chocolate just by looking at the packaging.
You can’t find purple color much in modern logos. Although violet tones work well in a logo design, think about creative ways to incorporate it into your logo to grab user’s attention instantly. Some famous logos with purple color are Yahoo, Cadbury, and Twitch.
Wrap Up
Colors are a great way to include life to your logo design. If you want a promising logo, focus on color palette, mix and match different shades, and experiment with different color combinations and see which variety depicts the genuine essence of your brand.
While you choose a color scheme, don’t forget your target audience and how they’ll be resonating with the colors you use.
