Archive for the 'Color' Category

16th Sep 2007

A Simple Guide to Picking Logo Colors

ABSTRACT:

Selecting a fitting color for your logo is a critical step in the design process. But how do you know what is the right logo color for you? This article leads you through the process and offers helpful guidance in making this decision.

Written by Jeff Kear © 2004
Creative Director, myICON Design

One of the most important things to consider when creating your logo is color. Often people simply choose their favorite color as their primary logo color, and although you certainly need to be able to live with the design and colors for your final logo design, you should consider other factors when deciding on your logo colors. These factors include:

Your business – Plainly said, some colors are better than others for certain businesses as well as for certain products and services. For example, pink is a perfectly fine color for a florist logo but wouldn’t be fitting for a homebuilder logo.

Your customers – Not all demographics react the same way to all colors. Women are more likely than men to respond favorably to a logo with pastel colors. Children may embrace a purple logo color more readily than adults. Americans see yellow as a warm, happy color, while the Greeks associate it with sadness.

Your industry – Look at the logo colors in your industry and you will probably start to see some trends emerge. For example, high tech logos rely heavily on the color blue, while red is a common logo color for food and beverage companies.

Your company personality – What are the traits or moods you want your logo to convey? Stability? Sophistication? Friendliness? Trendiness? Daring? Reserved? Your logo color can quickly express the mood and feeling of your business’ brand, which is why you want to consider your choices carefully.

Here are a few basic colors and the emotional responses frequently associated with them.

Red

passion, power, daring, boldness
assertiveness, love, sexuality

Orange

welcome, playful,
warmth, fun

Yellow

friendliness, happiness,
warmth, optimism, sunny

Green

money/financial, growth, abundance, safety,
health, freshness, fruitfulness, relaxation

Blue

reliability, stability, dependability,
leadership, trust, truth, coolness

Purple

fashion, intellect, sophistication,
wealth, regal, spirituality

Pink

sweetness, femininity,
sensitivity, softness

Brown

earthiness, organic, friendliness,
natural, welcoming

White

cleanness, purity, hope, youthfulness,
openness, lightness, freshness

Black

elegance, power, sophistication,
darkness, premium, reserved, mystery

Gray

security, stability, character,
calmness, reserved

Gold

luxury, richness, prestige,
refined, expensive

Silver

refined, purity,
precision, prestige

When deciding on your final logo color, remember that most logos do not use more than three

colors, with most logos using either one or two colors. The reason for this is that a logo that bears more than three colors is more likely to be distracting to the eye and less likely to be remembered by the viewer.

About the Author
Jeff Kear is Owner and Director of Client Services for myICON Design. In his decade-and-a-half in the industry, Jeff has created revenue-generating advertising and design for nationally recognized brands such as Budget, MetLife, Moosehead Beer, Qwest and Toyota. In addition to working for design firms and ad agencies, he has served as a marketing and communications specialist at Fortune 500 companies and holds a master’s degree from the University of Maryland. You can contact Jeff at jeffk@myicondesign.com .

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05th Sep 2007

Using your Cell Phone Images to Print Business Cards

Many people are using Cell phone cameras today and the quality is improving daily. Have you ever thought about taking some of these digital for a personalized business card? Some of your best picture are on your phone but appear dark out of focus. With practice you can pull off high quality imagery, but don’t drive yourself crazy. You can get special software that will allow you to transfer you images to your computer for viewing and editing. One of the most common editing practices is cropping. It is use frequently because it is useful in eliminating parts of an photo that are undesirable. It is usually performed by making a square around the area of the image you would like to keep. Pick the best of the best, clean em up in Adobe Photoshop and send them to your printer for quality reproduction of CMYK printed business cards.

You are limited with the amount of enhancement you can with digital imaging but much of your originality will come from the unadulterated version. So, the area you really want to work on is light. The intelligence built in to your phone takes a measurement of the light at the time and the information from that second to the second you take you picture could change or the position of your phone will likely change. If you are shooting for printability your are best to shoot LOTS of pictures and pick the top 5>3>1…get second opinions will also help.

Here are a few tips to help you with colors schemes

Inside of physics color patterns is well-resolved as an attribute of an object or individual item that results from the light that is reflected. Colour light is channeled in abnormal wavelengths that are pictured by a viewer as distinctive colors. The easiest characterization of coloration physics is to transmit an atomic ray of white light (sunlight) through a prism and see how the white light is refracted and assorted into anomalous frequencies. The frequencies are communicated through the other view of the prism used for a spectrum or band of colors, from red, the most lengthy wavelength, to violet, the shortest.

Seven colours are as per usual distinguished within a spectrum

  1. Yellow- signifies depth, joy and has a genius effect. A Yellow flower: motivates and relieves spiritedness.
  2. Green- helps people suffering from depression, anguish and anxiousness.
  3. Blue- Blue symbolizes youth, spirituality, truth with amity. Blue flowers are relaxing and calm nerves.
  4. Red- Tropical and crimson colours, like red, reach outward and get attention. The color red is a very powerful color. Red is analyzed as achievement, confidence, courage together with vitality - it is the color most appointed by men.
  5. Indigo- means extrasensory perception, deep study combined with deep-down foreseeing- it has negative impact when used during physical activity.
  6. Orange - An Orange flower empowers with elates feelings. expresses anxiousness together with indulgence
  7. Violet- shows royal personage, bewitchment with mystery and is the color for people that seek attention

In the prism and the spectrum Newton discovered that sunlight (white light) is assorted into colored components when put through a prism.
Newton observed a sequence of colors varying from violet around indigo, green, yellow, blue, and orange to red. This range of colours is the visible spectrum.
White light is also be diversified into colours when it is reflected from paper thin films or layers.

What some of the Common Everyday Colors Mean

The world of color has a vocabulary of its own. Just as spoken or written words announce shades of significance, colors we see are constantly emitting effect on moods and daily life.

  • Pink may conveys delicate, non masculine while blue is factual as well as cool;
  • Red can be hot as fire/ alarming on the other hand yellow is optimistic as well as bright.
  • A professional can mark a scene of action much as an x-ray machine can
  • An artist has the absolute privilege of choice to call upon any coloration to get across ambience and feelings
  • Coloring will accent a feeling or attitude.
  • A painter will have comprehensive control over a palette to officer emotion present-day a firm’s technical know-how.
  • It is an emotional communication tool, colour is noteworthy for philosophical reasons.
  • Coloration is employed to communicate to folks directions on what to do and what they should not do: red stop; green, go; yellow, caution; red, again, danger; etc.
  • Coloring can tell you what does what , plus what goes where: green wire to earth, red wire to live. Color is widely used for a code to impart as well as order information as well as to give instructions.
  • Colour is used as a function in the year diagrammatic design
  • Coloring as communicator- Color patterns has a delegated authority to instill images; it is a great communicator.
  • Color patterns as communicator- When we be at a map, we can interpret the printed colours to imagine the busy highway as well as quiet minor road.
  • Color patterns as communicator- We build a picture in our mind’s eye of roads, lakes while mountains as well as visualize what to.
  • Manipulating mood as well as atmosphere- A subject matter greatly influences the distinct moods, too - moods that are again reinforced by proportions of certain colors
  • Simple uncomplicated coloring application conveys brightness with warmth
  • Artists will lay down colors using colourized pencils, pastels, acrylics and gouache with lively coloring experimentation.
  • Experiment with how you look at colours in nature, colors are rarely like you think they are.

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