Color Coordination For Businesses

Let’s be honest: if you walk into a fine jewelry shop and find that the walls have been painted fluorescent orange, you’re likely to walk right back out.  Now, with that fact established, we know you have some sense, but choosing colors for a brand or store can still be a tricky matter.

John Williams brings up several issues that everyone should consider.  First is the question of whether a color appeals to the store’s target audience; after all, some clothing outlet for California tweens might do okay with bright orange.

Second, he asks, "Is my primary color distinctive? . . .  If you’re a smaller brand, sharing the same color as a market leader may seem a good thing at first.  But it usually strengthens the leader’s position in the market due to consumer confusion and their association of that color with the leading brand."

For the same reason – avoiding consumer confusion – you’ll probably want to avoid using more than two colors in a logo.  Logos are supposed to represent your business, so they should look nice, but trying to turn them into multifaceted art objects isn’t the goal.

With that, we’ll leave you to Photoshop some ideas.  Good luck.