It's a gloomy, rainy day here at the office, so I've decided to brighten things up a little bit. It all started a couple of weeks ago when one of us remarked that all of the major social media channels' logos (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) were blue.
Following up on what other info was out there, I started browsing the web (one of the few things I can still do with a cast on my hand) and found a great infographic from COLOURlovers that answered my question. Basically they compiled the logo colors for the top 100 brands online (you can find the infographic here), and some interesting patterns emerge.
Blue was by far the most-used color with a solid 35-40% percent of the top 100 brands using it. Red came in second, being used by about 18% of the top brands, meaning that almost two-thirds of the top brands online base their color scheme around blue or red.
What surprised me was the lack of big online brands that use green, purple, or pink. Only 4 brands use green, 4 use purple and just 3 brands are pink. And when it comes to the big online brands that don't use any color (blacks, whites and grays), the numbers are just as low with only 5 or 6 brands falling into that category.
So, obviously color is important. But if you can't pick just one color to go with for your brand, don't rule out the option of going with all of them. That's because 3 of the top 10 web brands have a multicolored/rainbow color scheme, including the top two brands (Google and MSN/Windows Live/Bing).
In our increasingly-visual culture, the color you base your logo on is important because it will dictate many of the design choices you make for your brand as a whole. And whether you go with a proven winner like blue or take the road less-traveled by using green or purple, putting a lot of thought into your brand's color palette is a crucial step in establishing a brand identity.
