I love the subject of logo colors. And what I find is that a lot of people who are not interested at first, quickly become interested, even if they are not currently looking for a new logo.

As everyone knows, color can breathe energy and life into a picture. Movies, beach scenes, paintings – most of these would not be nearly as powerful in black and white. When we first present our logo designs to our clients, we do so in grayscale, which shocks many people when they first see them. You can read our section on logo creation to understand more of this.

They are expecting color, and without that expected color, the designs may not seem as powerful. I will contest though that a great logo looks good in just about any reasonable color, including black and white. But when you are expecting color, grayscale is a bit of a shock.

This article discusses 3 aspects of color with respect to logos and business identity:

• Selection Criteria: Why certain colors are used for certain businesses and industries.
• Colors and Interpretations: Color descriptions and how colors are typically interpreted by people, with a small attempt to give some cultural understandings.
• Use of Colors: Practical color use: printing, Pantone, and costs.

Selection Criteria

The selection of the logo colors should not be a random one. The selection of colors should be done very purposefully, with a definite goal in mind. Why is it many insurance companies have blue logos? Why do many commercial brands (Coca Cola, Marlboro) use red?

Some of this has to do with the physical interaction of the eye and lightwaves, some of this has to do with cultural interpretations of color. Black is not the color of funerals in every country, money is not the interpretation of green outside of the United States.

Red is physically interpreted by the human eyeball BEHIND the cornea, which means actually inside your head. This gives red an active feeling, as it seems to be constantly coming towards you. Red is used in commercial businesses because it creates excitement.

Blue is physically interpreted by the human eyeball IN FRONT OF the cornea, or outside your head. This gives blue a solid, immoveable feel. Blue is used in insurance companies, older businesses and businesses that want to be seen as being stable, sure and professional.

The other colors (with the exceptions of black, and green, which is another base color) are all mixtures of these colors, at least in terms of light (printing is completely different). Even white. What many people have not thought about is that white is actually the combination of a full “blast” of red, green and blue at the same time. Black is, of course, the absence of all light.

Colors and Interpretations

Red: Again, red is the color of commercial companies and products because of where it is seen by the eye. It is an active feel, appropriate for bars, restaurants, many places that want to attract a lot of attention. Red in China is associated with success and power, and will be found all over the country. Attention, danger: stop sign and stop lights … and as I write this, I notice that MS Word uses red color to underline misspelled words.

Green: Green is often culturally interpreted as a nature color. It is naturally used by companies that are environmentally oriented. However, shades of green can have radically different feels for people. Lime green would be a fresh, active color, while a darker green can be interpreted (negatively and positively, especially in the United States) with the color of money. Green can be a difficult color to pull off for a logo, unless it is chosen specifically to oppose the colors of major competitors.

Blue: Blue, again, is the color of stability. Older companies, insurance companies, one of the most famous blue logos is Big Blue: IBM. Blue is recommended a lot for B2B companies that want to have a professional feel. I used a very dark blue in the BrandMade logo to give it a professional, solid feel, without the real exclusive feel of black (see below). I wanted a more inviting color, but still wanted to portray stability and consistency. Plus, with the very dark blue, I can cut down on printing costs by only having a 2 color print for letterhead and things like this (see below for the practical applications of color and printing)

Black/Gray: My favorite personal color, black is the color of exclusiveness. This is a color that you want to use to generate feelings of exclusiveness or prestige. It can also be used in trendy logos, as black never goes out of style. Brown is not the new black, black is always the new black. But black needs to be handled with care, as it is not the most inviting color, and in many countries is the color of funerals (as is white).

Orange: Orange is currently a very popular trend in logos. Orange is a great color because it contains many of the characteristics of red, without the commercial association. Because a main component of orange is red, it is also seen behind the eye, and so is an active color. I chose orange for the BrandMade color specifically because of this, not because of the trend. In fact, I do not like orange that much in terms of my personal colors, but it has good results for logos. People usually associate orange with freshness, vibrancy and good health. But be careful, too much of anything is bad, and the orange color definitely personifies this.

Purple: Purple is typically seen as the color of royalty. This also can give purple a plush, exclusive feel when done correctly. However, when done incorrectly, it can make a design seem quite off. Purple is like orange, too much of a good thing may just be too much. Purple is a relatively rarely used color in logos – giving you a perfect opportunity to distinguish your brand from your competitors. Just make sure you choose a shade of purple which stands off well from a computer screen.

Funny enough, Federal Express chose orange and purple as their primary colors when they started out. Why is this? Because orange and purple typically make a very clashing combination which is not all that appealing. Why would FedEx do this? The goal of a FedEx package is to be noticed and seen immediately, and be given special, urgent treatment. You can always see a FedEx colored package amongst a pile of things on your desk.

Yellow: Yellow is seen as a sunshine color, and thus a color of happiness, freshness, and warmness. Power ties typically come in either red or yellow, so don’t mistake yellow for a subtle color. It can be a very effective alternative to red in terms of noticeability. However, as you can probably tell from the yellow on this screen, yellow does not show up very well against a white background, so if you choose yellow, chose a darker yellow or outline the yellow with your other color.

Pink: Pink is a great color to show femininity and sensitiveness. At the same time, some shades of pink are also very much in the red spectrum, giving an active, exciting feel. However other shades of pink, such as a pastel pink, are used to paint prison walls because they have been proven to elicit feelings of calmness. Choose a shade of pink wisely, or your logo may come off hard to look at. Offsetting pink with darker colors can be a good idea to tone down the logo, or make it look quite sophisticated, based on your overall look and feel.

White: For lots of obvious reasons, white is usually a good color to stay away from. Usually, logos will be printed on paper, and white just causes the logo to blend into the background too much. However, especially for internet businesses, if white is strategically done right, it can enhance and brighten an otherwise dark logo or website.

Use of Colors: How Your Choice Costs You

Colors can be used to generate different feelings in audiences, customers and potential clients. However, some use of color needs to be understood from a practical standpoint: printing.

I do not want to go too much in depth into printing and color. There is a lot of information to cover, and maybe I will do that in a later article. In the mean time, just realize that the number of colors, and the shades of colors, will affect your printing costs.

In an ideal world, I would recommend to every client that they only choose a single color for their logo. Why is this? Because this would cut printing costs down, a very practical way of looking at logo design.

However, given that we are all humans and like different things, this is not effective. But let me go through and explain why this is.

Printing costs are typically based on a 2 or 4 color scheme. Generally if you are using offset printing, the price of using each additional color adds about 25% to the cost. So if your logo is one color, and that color is dark enough to read text with, you can use 1 color to print a lot of your media.

Let’s take letterhead as an example. If you had this single, dark color logo, you could print both your logo and the text for your name, address, phone number, etc., very inexpensively.

The problem with a 2 color logo (which I will recommend in most cases anyway) is that you are already printing at a 25% cost increase. And depending on the colors, you may want to use black for the address text in the letterhead. You now have a 3 color print job (unless your logo is black and another color), which brings the price up more.

Unless you are in some kind of commercial, business to consumer industry like a bar or restaurant, I usually do not recommend 3 color logos. There may just be too much there to take in and absorb in the quick glance most people will give your logo. However, many designs very much lend themselves to a 3 color logo, and if that is the case, just go for it.

Pantone

What is Pantone? Pantone is a world wide industry standard for colors. If you have a Pantone color, you can be sure that if you print your document at two different printers, you should get exactly the same color – repeatedly. You can be sure that if you print your document in different countries, you should get exactly the same color – repeatedly.

If you want to print your logo on a pen, have it embroidered on a shirt – using Pantone colors you can get almost the exact same color – the only difference is the effect the media (plastic vs. cloth) has on the color.

So why would you not use Pantone? Because, by its very nature, Pantone cannot represent every possible color. Pantone is to the spectrum of colors as digital is to analog: analog can represent the very smallest differences in signals, digital can only represent “chunks” of the signal.

Basically, using Pantone is powerful in terms of consistent color, but you are more limited in terms of which colors you can choose.

CMYK

So what is the alternative to Pantone? CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and BlacK – the “K” stands for the last letter of Black, because “B” stands for Blue (RGB, Red Green Blue).

Using the 4 color CMYK scheme, you can pretty much choose any spectrum of any color which can be seen by humans. This does have some limitations, as CMYK color has more options than can be printed. Your screen can show pretty much every color because it sends out light – ink does not send out light, it actually absorbs it. (for instance, a pure blue ink is actually not pure blue, it just absorbs – does not reflect – every other color in the visible spectrum). This is a very important consideration that your designer needs to keep in mind.

So why would you not use CMYK? Because, the CMYK colors are much harder to replicate and repeat. If you print your logo at two different printers, you just might get two different shades of the same color. If you print your logo at the SAME printer on different days, you just might get two different shades of the same color.

Every time something is printed, the color must be heavily scrutinized to make sure that it is consistent with the color you have chosen for your logo or printing job. This causes additional verification steps, and the potential of increased costs if the color which is printed is not the color you were expecting.

For this reason, unless a very specific shade of a color is required to generate a very specific feel, or unless the logo or materials will only be seen online or in email, I always recommend using Pantone colors. You may not get exactly what you want, but your logo is repeatable across every media, across every country.

And since repeatability and consistency is what you want in your logo and advertising materials, Pantone can be a better choice.

Scott Minteer
BrandMade

www.thebrandmade.com