Brazilian artist highlights power of signature brand colours
Brazilian artist Paula Rupolo has published a series of illustrations which highlight just how powerful signature brand colours have become to the human eye.
Taking global brands such as Coca Cola, McDonald’s and Google as her muses Rupolo switched their logo colour schemes for those of corporate rivals such as Pepsi, Subway and Yahoo to show just how jarring the results can be.
Such is the strength of colour association with such brands that the effect is disconcerting, as Rupolo noted: “Colors are the first thing you notice in a logo, what gets fastest to our brands.Then you read a logo’s shape, icons, or typography.
“They basically own the colors of the logos. When you switch [their logos] to a competitor’s colors, your brain notices there’s something that doesn’t fit, that makes you go, ‘What’s going on here?’”
DesFar from random there is in fact some science behind the choice of some big brand colour schemes, with McDonald’s plumping for red which has psychological associations with speed and urgency.
Facebook’s famous blue tones impart more of a sense of comfort however.