Your brand, in color

Jeff Kear — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:53:35 +0000

I once walked into a room to discuss a corporate identity (logo, color schemes, fonts, etc., etc.) project with the president of a company and his director of marketing. We had barely started in before he interrupted us by saying, “Now I don’t like brown or green or orange, and our main competitors are blue, red and yellow.” I remember somebody on our team say, “Well, that still leaves us with purple.” “Nah, don’t like that much either,” he said.

“So what do you like?” I asked. “I dunno. It’s your job to figure that out,” he said without blinking.

Oddly, choosing a color for a company’s brand is often the most agonizing, drawn-out and expensive marketing project a company undertakes. The reason is simple: when it comes to color, everybody has a strong opinion, and those opinions usualy stand in the way in doing what’s best for your brand. Don’t let them.

Here are a few hints to keep the wheels greased so you can pick a color and move on.

1. Pick the color that sets you apart – The company president mentioned earlier was right in staying away from his competitor’s colors. Hertz is yellow; Avis is red. FedEx is purple and orange; UPS is brown and yellow. Ford is blue; GM is, well, blue (yet another way the automotive industry went wrong). This is far and away the most important criteria for choosing a color, so don’t get swayed by color studies and other subjective criteria when there’s a color in your industry that nobody owns. Seriously consider it if it’s not something entirely out of place (see hint #3).

2. Stick with one main color and one accent color – Kaleidoscopes and tie-died shirts are great to look at when you’re stoned, but otherwise a rainbow of colors only muddles, confuses and says you weren’t bold enough to settle on one color. Make a statement … pick one color and stick with it. (And for those who say that Google has a rainbow and it has worked for them, well, the exception proves the rule.)

3. Avoid the obvious misfits – Pink is probably not right for a bank. Brown might not work for a party supply store. There are some colors that obviously won’t fit your industry, so stay away from them (unless you want to roll the dice and do something adventurous and extraordinary and potentially brilliant).

3. Pick a color you can live with – Your favorite color may not be practical or available (based on what other companies already own). And you certainly don’t want to stare at a color you hate on your business card. Find what’s best for your company and move on.

Branding Brief » corporate identity

Your brand, in color