It's all about colour

Choosing the right colours for your website, logo or anything else you use to market your business doesn’t need to be hard, you just need to understand a few basics about the psychology of colour and the emotional triggers may they evoke.

While certain colours do broadly align with specific traits (e.g. brown with ruggedness, purple with sophistication, and red with excitement), nearly every academic study on colours and branding will tell you that it’s far more important for colours to support the personality you want to portray instead of trying to align with stereotypical colour associations.

With this said, the following list of colours and associations should be considered according to the strategy and ideas you are trying to achieve. Colour is one element within a design, and therefore colour should not be chosen in isolation.

RED:

• Excitement

• Imaginative and uniqueness

• Independence   

• Contemporary

• Passion and excitement

BLUE:

• Sincerity and reliability

• Down-to-earth

• Originality

• Cheerful

GREEN:

• Reassurance

• Intelligence

• Confidence

• Security

PURPLE:

• Sophistication

• Charming

• Glamourous

• Creativity

YELLOW:

• Optimism

• Rugged

• Confidence

• Friendliness

In a survey, people were asked to choose the colour they associated with particular words:

• Trust: Most chose the colour blue (34%), followed by white (21%) and green (11%)

• Security: Blue came out on top (28%), followed by black (16%) and green (12%)

• Speed: Red was overwhelmingly the favorite (76%)

• Cheapness: Orange came first (26%), followed by yellow (22%) and brown (13%)

• High Quality: Black was the clear winner (43%), then blue (20%)

• High Tech: This was almost evenly split, with black the top choice (26%) and blue and gray second (both 23%)

• Reliability: Blue was the top choice (43%), followed by black (24%)

• Courage: Most chose purple (29%), then red (28%), and finally blue (22%)

• Fear/Terror: Red came in first (41%) followed by black (38%)

• Fun: Orange was the top choice (28%), followed closely by yellow (26%) and then purple (17%)

Source: http://www.joehallock.com/edu/COM498/associations.html