September 12, 2024
How to Create Brand Recognition Using Color
When designing and marketing a recognizable brand identity, it is essential to consider all five senses: touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell. Netflix’s iconic intro chime and the NFL theme song are both examples of successful audio branding. Any millennial will remember the distinct smell of entering, or even just walking past, a Hollister store at the mall. Ten years ago, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge swept the globe — a freezing cold example of “touch branding” that raised an estimated $135 million for ALS research. Pepsi Co. exemplifies powerful taste branding with its longstanding Pepsi Challenge campaign, and Tiffany & Co. is legendary with its color branding. Their iconic robin’s-egg blue hue, known around the world today as Tiffany Blue®, was registered as a color trademark in 1998. It was then standardized as a custom color created by Pantone® in 2001 exclusively for Tiffany’s use.
This blog post will highlight how you can harness the power of color branding. Like Tiffany Blue®, your color choices applied thoughtfully and consistently, can increase your visual recognition and reinforce your brand’s identity, capturing your audience’s attention.
CREATE AN INTENTIONAL BRAND COLOR PALETTE
There’s a psychology behind the selection of brand colors. Colors unconsciously evoke varying emotions and associations, and the colors a brand chooses to represent itself can likewise convey its personality, values, and product positioning. Red stimulates excitement and urgency, while blue conveys trust and reliability. Green often symbolizes growth and health, while yellow conjures happiness and warmth. Black evokes power, sophistication, and mystery, but white is associated with purity, simplicity, and cleanliness. Taking all of this into account, it’s clear why athletic companies often choose reds and oranges (e.g., Nike and New Balance), insurance companies blues (e.g., Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield and Progressive), and health food stores greens (e.g., Whole Foods and New Seasons Market). When creating your brand color palette, start by determining what feelings and actions you hope to inspire in your audience.
CONSIDER CULTURAL CONTEXT & GLOBAL APPEAL
While color psychology can evoke specific emotions, it’s essential to recognize that color meanings may vary across cultures. A color that works in one market might carry entirely different connotations elsewhere. For instance, while white is associated with purity and simplicity in Western cultures, it can represent celebration and new beginnings in other regions. Similarly, red can symbolize excitement and urgency in some areas, but in countries like India, it’s often linked to joy, prosperity, and festive occasions. As brands expand globally, it’s critical to ensure that their color palette resonates with diverse audiences, adapting as necessary to avoid unintended cultural misinterpretations.
CONFIRM ACCESSIBILITY
As you’re creating your overarching brand color palette and any subsequent campaign, event, or merchandise line color palettes, it’s important to ensure that your color choices are inclusive and accessible to people with vision deficiencies. According to the World Health Organization, over 2.2 billion people worldwide suffer from some form of vision impairment, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) determined that around 20 million are Americans. These are big numbers, and you want to ensure your brand is recognizable to everyone!
High-contrast color combinations — like Snapchat’s yellow, black, and white (pictured above) — can make your content more readable to people with visual impairments. We recommend utilizing a tool like Adobe’s Contrast Checker before finalizing any color palettes.
ENSURE CONSISTENCY ACROSS ALL BRAND TOUCHPOINTS
In an ideal world, your primary brand color(s) will become as recognizable as your logo (e.g., Tiffany & Co.’s robin’s-egg blue). This is easier said than done, but you can still work to create brand recognition by consistently pairing your primary brand color with your logo and integrating both across all brand touchpoints. Your logo, website, social media, advertisements, signage, packaging, and any environmental graphics (e.g., office or retail wall graphics) should be consistent in color branding.
USE COLOR STRATEGICALLY IN CAMPAIGNS
Individual campaigns, events, or merchandise lines might feature secondary color palettes outside a company's overarching brand colors. Athletic companies often sell apparel for both high- and low-impact sports (e.g., running vs. yoga), so retail displays within the same store should likewise differ based on the associated energy level. A yoga clothing line might be surrounded by graphics in cooler, relaxing tones while running apparel is supported by warm, energizing colors.
Color can also be used strategically to draw attention and convey specific messaging. Retail sale graphics generally feature vibrant colors and bold text to create urgency. Subdued, calming colors do not evoke the feelings that precede impulse buying.
MAINTAIN FLEXIBILITY WITHOUT COMPROMISING IDENTITY
While consistency in color branding is essential for brand recognition, flexibility is equally important in a dynamic marketplace. As brands evolve and diversify, it’s crucial to introduce complementary colors that work within your established palette while offering room for creative expression. Consider the evolution of brands like Google or Apple, which maintain core colors but regularly introduce secondary palettes for special projects, product lines, or campaigns. This approach allows you to remain recognizable while still innovating and refreshing your visual identity. However, it's essential to strike a balance — too much variation can dilute the brand identity you’ve worked hard to build.
