Corporate colours contain hidden meanings, so what are they secretly saying about your business?

Choose your primary logo and business theme colours carefully, as every colour has a subliminal meaning that should reflect your style and theme of business.

Here are some examples for you to compare your corporate or even personal colours against their hidden meanings…

• Blue-Green – wear this colour to get noticed, it causes reactions in both men and woman
• Pale Blue is known to encourage flights of fantasy and is very calming.
• Green makes people feel safe and secure (used in hospitals, clinics).
• Brown is seen as a symbol of informality and invites people to open up through conversation (a good colour for marriage councillors).
• Yellow elicits the quickest response from potential buyers.
• Gray inspires creativity and symbolises success.
• Black signifies dignity, sophistication and authority.
• Red stirs senses and passion and is associated with power and energy.
• Orange stimulates creativity, ambition and energetic activity.

Would you like to charge a little more for your products or services? Then add a little burgundy to your corporate colour palette.  Affluent men and woman are attracted to blue-based red tones, whereas it produces uneasy feelings in lower socio-economic groups.

Once you’ve chosen your colours it’s vital that your brand stays true to them. If your corporate colours are young and vibrant make sure that your marketing materials, your staff, the way you answer the phone and your product mix reflect this.

Finally, what good is a well-thought-through and meaningful colour palette if your colours don’t remain consistent? Look at the world’s leading brands like Qantas or Coca Cola for example. How many shades or variations of their chosen colour do you see around the world or across different media? The answer is none. Wherever you see their logo, it is always displayed in their exact tone of red and so it should be for your brand colours too.

Use spot colour printing for your marketing collateral or at very least have an approved four-colour process breakdown for your key colours, especially for print advertising. Make sure your colour remains true online and invest in having a detailed brand style guide for anyone and everyone to follow.

In short, never underestimate the power of colour.

Tony Eades is the creative director for DesignShop ^[1], Australia’s fastest growing online design and print solution provider. He has more than 20 years experience in design, advertising and client media campaigns.

Photo: Jepoirrier ^[2] (Flickr)