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What’s in a colour

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Colour has an impact on our everyday decisions, from crossing the street to choosing a food or household item from a shop or supermarket and wanted to explore this from a business perspective, such as branding and design. You may not realise it but this has been used in many ways to promote a particular type of product as the colour has a long standing meaning.

To give you an idea of this, here is the western meanings of some colours:

Red: warmth, love, anger, danger, boldness, excitiement, speed, strength, energy, determination, desire, passion, courage, socialism.

Pink: feminine, love, caring, nurture.

Orange: attention-grabbing, comfort, liveliness, cowardice, hunger, optimism, overwhelm, summer, intellect, happiness, energy, conflict.

Green: durability, relaiblity, environmental, luxurious, optimism, well-being, nature, calm, relaxation, spring, safety, honesty, harmony, freshness.

Blue: peace, professionalism, loyalty, reliablity, honour, trust, melancholia, boredom, coldness, winter, depth, stability, conservatism.

Purple: power, royalty, nobility, elegance, sophistication, artificial, luxury, mystery, magic.

Gray: conservatism, traditionalism, intelligence, serious, dull, uninteresting.

Brown: relaxing, confident, casual, reassuring, nature, earthy, solid, reliable, genuine, autumn, endurance.

Black: elegance, sophistication, formality, power, strength, illegality, depression, morbidity, night, death.

White: cleanliness, purity, newness, virginity, peace, innocence, simplicity, sterility, snow, ice, cold.

Now if some of these colours are used in combination with one another and in various shades of those colours the visual impact can be stunning, such as a White logo on a shade of Blue background for a business in a health or well-being industry.

Why not explore about what these colours say about your business, see if they have some real life applications that could assist your business in on going marketing.

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