Color plays a powerful role in branding, marketing and communication — and a logo is often where that power shows up first. Logo colors are more than design details. They’re strategic tools used to influence how customers feel about, respond to and even remember a brand. The right palette can reinforce a brand’s identity, signal its values and create instant emotional connections. Think red to spark excitement, purple to convey sophistication, or green to suggest eco-friendliness.

These popular associations are often reinforced by color symbolism charts and guides designed to help businesses, brands and marketing teams choose the best color for their logos.

Over time, these tools have become popular resources for brands looking to create or perfect their logo design. But our recent research offers a cautionary tale: Relying on these tools too heavily can actually distort a brand’s message, primarily because they overlook two factors that shape how customers perceive colors.

COLORS EVOKE BOTH POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE MEANINGS. For example, blue can evoke trust and calm, but also sadness and fear. Green is often associated with growth and health, yet it can also suggest toxicity and monstrosity.

COLORS ARE INTERPRETED WITHIN THE BROADER CONTEXT IN WHICH THEY APPEAR. Context, background, and the overall design concept shape how a color is going to be perceived. Whether a color communicates something positive or negative depends on how it interacts with the larger visual, especially the background color against which it is placed.

To help brands make better decisions about their logo designs, we explored these two key areas in our research.

HERE’S WHAT WE FOUND:

1. BACKGROUND COLOR MATTERS.

Across our studies, we found that commonly used logo colors can take on both positive and negative meanings. A consumer’s perception depends not just on the logo color, but on whether the logo is sitting on a white or black background. In general, logos on black backgrounds elicited emotions and associations that are traditionally viewed as more “negative” (e.g., aggressiveness, danger, eeriness, sadness, toxicity). White backgrounds, conversely, triggered emotions and associations seen as more “positive” (e.g., fun, kindness, liveliness, optimism, trust).

2. NOT ALL LOGOS ARE AFFECTED EQUALLY.

Our research found that a logo’s design style — specifically whether it was abstract or representative — played a meaningful role in how strongly those shifts appeared.

We found that when a logo was representative, participants were more focused on the meaningful idea or concepts it depicted, making color less central to their interpretation of the logo. In contrast, when a logo was abstract, participants couldn’t immediately interpret its meaning, making color the most salient, and often only, understandable characteristic.

WHAT SHOULD YOUR BRAND DO?

To decide which direction is right for your business’s brand, start by asking: How do we want consumers to experience our product or service? What personality traits should come through?

If your brand aims to evoke bold or traditionally “negative” emotions, consider using a black background. On the other hand, if your goal is to create “positive” impressions use a white background.

Second, regardless of whether your brand is well-known or not, we recommend creating clear guidelines for how color is used in your visual identity. A brand guide can help you define when and why to use each version of your logo, based on the message you want to convey.

Color symbolism charts and guides are a helpful starting point, but they don’t capture the complexity of how color actually works in branding.

In the summer of 2018, a curious news story began to make the rounds on social media: Domino’s Pizza was filling potholes in towns across America, leaving a branded sticker on the freshly laid asphalt. The initiative, playfully named “Paving for Pizza,” was a practical response to a common nuisance — the potholes that can wreak havoc on cars, buses and yes, pizza deliveries.

Domino’s campaign earned the company more than 1 billion media impressions in its first eight months alone. The runaway success illustrates a new, underutilized approach to brand strategy.

According to surveys by PR giant Edelman, just 63% of consumers trust brands to do what is right, 46% say brands are not doing enough to address issues like climate change, yet 59% of consumers will pay more if the brand does good in the world.

Brands are thus in a bind — they must draw attention to themselves but be seen to be acting selflessly. To understand how to do this successfully, I studied more than 150 award-winning campaigns from the Cannes Lions (the preeminent marketing awards for “viral” marketing campaigns) between 2018 and 2023.

I developed a framework to guide brands in this endeavor, ensuring their campaigns not only exhibit heroism but also resonate effectively with their audience. The framework includes four necessary conditions to ensure the success of a hero campaign.

SEVERITY

Creating a hero campaign begins by identifying a problem in society that is severe enough for people to care about. The litmus test for identifying a sufficiently severe social or environmental issue is that consumers must view it as a genuine threat, either now or in the future.

EFFORT

Picture a superhero attempting to save the occupants of a burning house. They won’t be seen as a hero unless they do their absolute best to save the people inside — you can’t phone in efforts to “save the day.” Hero brands must similarly demonstrate determination and dedication to avoid being seen to be paying only lip service to their noble intentions.

AFFINITY

Affinity is a feeling of warmth, respect, or deep appreciation for an activity, idea, or object. A campaign with high affinity is viewed as relevant by the target audience, while a campaign with low affinity is seen as irrelevant.

The most common way to increase the affinity in a hero campaign is to position the brand as a justice seeker, challenging a powerful adversary in the name of change.

REACH

For a hero campaign to succeed, it needs to reach enough people. Two critical factors determine sufficient reach: public awareness of the social issue and the recognition of its negative impact on society.

Brands, like people, possess distinct personalities and seek admiration and recognition. However, like responsible citizens, brands need to introspect and ask, “How can I contribute meaningfully to society?” This marks the beginning of a journey where a brand transcends traditional marketing and branding paradigms to become a cherished and respected member of the community it serves.