Your brand is important. Your message is important. Your font usage, logo, and overall marketing is important, but what about your colors? Are they communicating what you think they are communicating or is this an area that needs attention? For every brand, this is definitely an area of design that is as crucial as everything else you’ve got to handle within your marketing needs. This is why.
Studies that showcase the effects of color in respect to purchasing power:
-In an appropriately titled study called Impact of Color in Marketing, researchers found that up to 90% of snap judgments made about products can be based on color alone. This is huge! It should mean that this area alone is something that everyone should be paying attention to.
-The study Exciting Red and Competent Blue also confirms that purchasing intent is greatly affected by colors due to the impact they have on how a brand is perceived. For example, if your brand is selling car repairs or oil changes, you wouldn’t use pink or purple to communicate this (Purple can have a negative impact when used incorrectly by communicating Introversion, decadence, suppression, inferiority while pink can communicate Inhibition, emotional claustrophobia, emasculation, physical weakness).
Each color has both positive and negative side effects. It’s the intent that defines that usage of these colors in respect to the brand and your audience you are targeting. Here’s a list of those positives and negatives.
RED. Physical
Positive: Physical courage, strength, warmth, energy, basic survival, ‘fight or flight’, stimulation, masculinity, excitement.
Negative: Defiance, aggression, visual impact, strain.
BLUE. Intellectual.
Positive: Intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, serenity, duty, logic, coolness, reflection, calm.
Negative: Coldness, aloofness, lack of emotion, unfriendliness.
YELLOW. Emotional
Positive: Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity.
Negative: Irrationality, fear, emotional fragility, depression, anxiety, suicide.
GREEN. Balance
Positive: Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace.
Negative: Boredom, stagnation, blandness, enervation.
VIOLET. Spiritual
Positive: Spiritual awareness, containment, vision, luxury, authenticity, truth, quality.
Negative: Introversion, decadence, suppression, inferiority.
ORANGE.
Positive: Physical comfort, food, warmth, security, sensuality, passion, abundance, fun.
Negative: Deprivation, frustration, frivolity, immaturity.
PINK.
Positive: Physical tranquillity, nurture, warmth, femininity, love, sexuality, survival of the species.
Negative: Inhibition, emotional claustrophobia, emasculation, physical weakness.
GREY.
Positive: Psychological neutrality.
Negative: Lack of confidence, dampness, depression, hibernation, lack of energy.
BLACK.
Positive: Sophistication, glamour, security, emotional safety, efficiency, substance.
Negative: Oppression, coldness, menace, heaviness.
WHITE.
Positive: Hygiene, sterility, clarity, purity, cleanness, simplicity, sophistication, efficiency.
Negative: Sterility, coldness, barriers, unfriendliness, elitism.
BROWN.
Positive: Seriousness, warmth, Nature, earthiness, reliability, support.
Negative: Lack of humour, heaviness, lack of sophistication.
Utilizing the colors in their own intent is going to drastically change the results of your customer experience. There are studies that showcase the success of a simple change in color and how a brand was able to get over 500,000 more sales in CDs just by having an in-house design team pick the colors used on a CD leaflet. You can find the study here. http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/section/whycolouraffects/case-studies.
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