Psychologists have studied the relationship between color and emotion for years and have found a strong correlation between color and emotional responses. Armed with this information, it’s no surprise that brands take a lot of time choosing the perfect colors for their designs.
Color plays a big part in graphic design as it can set a mood, evoke emotion or drive home a point. Color can make us feel happiness or sadness. Strength or compassion. Confidence or fear. When creating your own designs for your promotional products or marketing campaigns, think about the message you want to portray. How do you want your customers to feel?
Think of some of the big brands. McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Wendy’s use red in their logos to promote hunger. Best Buy, Shell and UPS want to evoke optimism, warmth and clarity. Or, consider the many creative purple logos we know of that represent evolving companies such as T-Mobile or Yahoo! Color makes a huge difference in how we view a brand.
Below are the most popular colors used in marketing designs and the message they deliver to customers. This infographic comes from Logo Company.