Color Me Branded

Color may be the sin­gle most impor­tant ele­ment in design­ing your iden­tity. In some indus­tries it is pre­cisely how com­pa­nies dif­fer­en­ti­ate themselves.

Think about the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­try, specif­i­cally in cel phones. Ver­i­zon is red and black, Sprint is yel­low and black, ATT&T has tra­di­tion­ally been blue, but has taken on orange with its acqui­si­tion of Cin­gu­lar. Each com­pany has its own dis­tinct bright color to quickly and eas­ily iden­tify it.

In the motor­cy­cle indus­try, color goes beyond adver­tis­ing and sales col­lat­eral when it comes to its iden­tity. Color is applied directly to prod­ucts (motor­cy­cles, apparel, etc.), and is even extended to their rac­ing teams. Ducati red, Kawasaki green, Harley Davidson’s dis­tinc­tive orange black.
There are two approaches to choos­ing color when cre­at­ing your company’s iden­tity: You can choose some­thing that aligns itself with what’s tra­di­tional within your busi­ness’ indus­try. Or you can choose some­thing that sets you apart.

The first works best with more tra­di­tional indus­tries, in which look­ing like you’ve been around for a long time is a huge ben­e­fit. The sec­ond for when you’re in a new and/or cut­ting edge industry.

Of course, there are no hard and fast rules. Per­haps you’re apply­ing cut­ting edge tech­nol­ogy to a tra­di­tional indus­try… either approach might work.

Of course mar­ket research is key. Know­ing who your tar­get cus­tomer is, and what they respond to will be most help­ful in choos­ing your palette.