An Inside Out perspective of Colours, Emotions & Branding
Its been almost a decade since I first saw the movie Inside Out. The portrayal of emotions in different colours is not something anyone would have missed. The trailer of the Part-2 got me thinking of the colours and the emotions associated with it; and how that can be put to use in Product Branding.
Hope most(or none) of us never had any second thoughts on the colours chosen to portray these. Can we understand why and move on to product analogy?
Happiness & Sadness
“She was happy as a sunshine”, does that just mean that sun is “YELLOW” and we associate sun with happiness. Does it have more to it? Turns out it does.
“Exposure to sunlight also releases serotonin in the brain. Serotonin boosts a person’s mood. A lack of sunlight can lead to a lack of serotonin, increasing the chances for someone to feel depressed or suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD).” Refer — https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/why-does-the-sun-make-us-happy/#
“Am feeling blue, Monday morning blue” — these might have originated from a custom among many old deepwater sailing ships. If the ship lost the captain or any of the officers during its voyage, she would fly blue flags and have a blue band painted along her entire hull when returning to home port. Another reason could be, the Etymology: The word “BLUE” itself is believed to have Old English and Old Norse origins, and it may have been used to describe someone who was timid, fearful, or depressed.
Anger
“She got all red when her name was in the list”, an increased blood flow can flush the face red when we are angry. This can look evident in fair skinned humans. This could be one reason why they have given the emotion a “RED”. You could argue it is also the color of energy, as the blood gushes to your head you want something with the adrenaline which came along, the act could be productive or counter-productive thats a different tangents to be discussed.
Disgust
“The boy looked green, just then he started puking” the idiom “looking green” has been in use for centuries if not decades. Most monsters, aliens are portrayed in “GREEN”, though I would argue green is the colour of nature that actually has a calming effect, but I have to accept a tint of black to green makes it feel all mossy and frightening. This could be due to our age old association of seeing thing getting rotten, could be as old as Palaeolithic human, when he had no means to preserve his bounty after a hard day of hunting. It feels disgusting to see your hardwork taken away by microscopic beings isn’t (covered with fungus/bacteria). So the hues of greens makes it calming or disgusting is a safe conclusion to draw.
Fear
Though “PURPLE” is a sophisticated colour mostly associated with royalness, the shade of purple used here was pastel’ly. But based on the reference it looks like they needed a colour that would stand out from the rest that was print friendly in the initial days, and the only colour left was purple and so be it; it attained the status. But personally it is BLACK for me, a dark alley would scare the hell out of anyone.
Product Branding
Moving on the branding aspects and how a product can be perceived by the mere selection of colours. While some products speaks to us and the other may not be doing so, a simple analogy here for you.
What do you see below? Just two hands or anything more?
Unless you are living under the rocks, you would have noticed it as a coke bottle. All it has, is a RED bottle cap. But that was enough to make you think about the coke. So efficient they have made the branding that you cannot miss it.
Lets get the basis before we hop into a product branding, the following are basic queries that you may what to be answered.
- What domain is my product or service fall?
- What emotion should it evoke on being seen or remembered?
- What are the core values that the product or services tries to delivery?
- Does the product have a direct association with the colour? i.e, if you are selling a mango drink it is a no brainer to choose yellow. You don’t pick colour of blue berry to promote mango.
These can be the basis to being with, there are other technical queries that we may have to ask; for instance, “Does it resemble my competitor product in any way?”, “Will it be suitable for all the mediums (print, digital, etc..)”. But the basis would be able to navigate you in the right direction.
Next time someone comes with colour palettes to you for a branding discussion without any background story, hope you know what to do.
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