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.

Extended producer responsibility regulations — which make manufacturers more accountable for the end-of-life phase of their products — are gaining traction in the U.S. and around the world. Companies such as Apple, Adidas, Dell and IKEA aren’t waiting for regulations and have initiated take-back strategies that allow consumers to return used products to be put back into the production cycle.

Using a proprietary data set from a reverse-logistics company that facilitates take-back programs for Fortune 500 companies, we found that customers spent 4.8% more after they became aware of the manufacturer’s take-back program. The data also showed that customers spent 5.9% more on their second visit to the store (after they were aware of the program) than the initial visit, and 9.8% more on their third visit than the first visit.

In addition, we conducted a combination of lab, online and field experiments using both stated willingness to pay and actual spending behavior. Our results confirmed the higher valuation consumers place on take-back products, demonstrated that control over disposal is a valued feature of product ownership and suggested design principles such programs might employ, such as:

TIE THE PROGRAM TO SPECIFIC PRODUCTS.

While promoting your take-back program as part of your general sustainability efforts can be helpful, you should also make an explicit connection with individual products. In our experiments, while we did find that a company could gain positive reputational benefits, we only saw a willingness to pay more for products specific to the take-back program. Advertising, marketing material and in-store information should make clear that the customer can bring this product back, a strategy that reinforces psychological ownership of the product even before a purchase.

AVOID UNNECESSARY INCENTIVES.

Some companies are experimenting with added incentives, like discounts on future purchases and loyalty programs for customers who purchase take-back products. In our experiments, we tested whether providing discounts on new purchases when bringing back clothing or providing reverse logistics impacted consumers’ valuation. We found that consumers are unwilling to pay more for discounts or pick-up and return service, but the results did indicate that consumers would be more loyal to brands that offered incentives.

FOSTER AWARENESS ON THE APPEAL OF TAKE-BACK PROGRAMS.

Companies should create broad consumer awareness of these programs because the more they know, the more they are likely to spend on take-back products. By understanding the link between psychological ownership and circular products, consumers can cultivate a deeper connection to their purchases, enabling a more conscious consumption culture.

DESIGN AND MARKET PRODUCTS TO EMPHASIZE CONSUMER CONTROL.

Take-back programs afford consumers disposal control, which empowers them to avoid waste. More broadly, consumers’ perception of value and psychological attachment to products often hinges on how well a product lets them exert control, acquire intimate knowledge or establish personal connections. Thus, companies should refine product design — for example, building in settings that can be changed by the consumer — to emphasize greater feelings of ownership.

Product managers (PMs) at tech companies working on consumer-facing features face a series of challenging but crucial tasks: identifying the business problem a product will solve, defining the product requirements correctly and settling on an optimal design before handing the project off to engineers to build. At each step in the process, PMs must ensure that what gets built serves both customers and the business.

Contrary to the common misconception that the product team consists solely of PMs, a product team consists of several players. In her book Continuous Discovery Habits, product discovery coach Teresa Torres describes the roles this way:

PRODUCT MANAGER: The strategic thinker who aligns customer needs with business goals.

DESIGNER: The user experience expert who ensures the product is intuitive and delightful to use.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER: The technical expert who brings insights on feasibility and implementation.

While this core trio forms the heart of the product team, it’s important to note that the composition may vary depending on your company’s size and product complexity. In some organizations, a PM might also take on design responsibilities, or you might have a design technologist who straddles both design and engineering roles. Additionally, depending on the company or the org, engineering or design teams can be large and more than one designer or engineer may be involved in the project. However, in the ideation phase, it’s best if the PM identifies relevant engineering and design leads and includes them in the product trio. And sometimes, depending on the product and organization, additional roles may need to be included.

Product development is inherently cross-functional, and early collaboration among these core roles can significantly enhance the discovery process.

To address these challenges and strike the right balance, it’s crucial to redefine what constitutes a product team and examine the key phases of the product development process.

INVOLVING THE RIGHT PLAYERS AT THE RIGHT TIME

Let’s break down the product development process into five key stages, examining how to effectively involve stakeholders at each point:

1. PROBLEM FRAMING: SETTING THE FOUNDATION

Before involving the entire product trio, PMs should gain clarity on the problem statement. This crucial first step ensures that the problem being addressed is relevant to the business and worthy of the product team’s time and resources. Bijan Shahrokhi, founder of Product Management Exercises, advises PMs: “You want to remain the oracle in the early phases of a project (especially the earlier parts of ideation) before you put out your requirements in front of many people.”

In general, a good idea for the PM at this stage is to independently conduct high level customer research and produce a problem overview document containing the details of what exactly is the business problem, who is the target customer and associated customer problem and what is the desired outcome.

Once you have this document, review it with leadership and key stakeholders to ensure alignment before proceeding to the next stage.

2. DEFINING REQUIREMENTS: COLLABORATIVE EXPLORATION

During this stage, the product trio works together to conduct customer interviews and research as a team, identify and prioritize the relevant user stories, draft and iterate on the PRD collaboratively, create and refine design mock-ups and assess technical feasibility continuously. The goal of this stage is to draft product requirements that mitigate three key risks:

DESIRABILITY RISK: Are we building features that customers actually want?

USABILITY RISK: Can users easily find and effectively use what we’re building?

FEASIBILITY RISK: Is it possible to build this with our allocated engineering resources and existing tech stack?

During this point in the process, PMs need to be sure they aren’t working too closely with one of the other functions and excluding the other. While early collaboration with design and engineering may seem costly in terms of resource allocation, it ultimately saves time by preventing late-stage issues that could derail the entire project.

3. IMPLEMENTATION: MAINTAINING ENGAGEMENT

This is the phase where the product trio officially hands over the requirements to the larger engineering team for development. As the project moves into the implementation phase, it’s easy to assume that engineering takes the reins while PMs and designers step back. However, maintaining constant engagement across the product trio during this stage is crucial for success.

During this stage, PMs and designers should attend sprint reviews regularly or schedule ad hoc sync meetings to address emerging issues. If needed, they must be prepared to revise requirements or design inputs. Depending on the product, business stakeholders can be involved here too.

This ongoing collaboration helps reduce the risk of missed requirements and minimizes turnaround time if revisions are necessary.

4. TESTING: THE FINAL REVIEW

When engineering declares the product code-complete and unit tested, it’s tempting to consider the job done. It’s not.

During this stage, the product trio must come together to test the product in the Gamma (test) environment, and involve internal business stakeholders for additional testing if possible and relevant. The goal here is to look for user interface inconsistencies or missed validations which could adversely impact user experience, and provide feedback to engineering before final release.

This final review can catch additional subtle issues that might have been overlooked, ensuring a higher-quality product release and maintaining customer trust.

5. RELEASE: COORDINATING THE LAUNCH

The release phase often begins in parallel with testing. As a PM, you’ll typically take the lead in preparing go-to-market materials, but it’s important to maintain collaboration with your product trio and other relevant teams. This work will include preparing launch announcements and help center updates, collaborating with internal support or marketing teams and having the product trio review all customer-facing messaging.

This collaborative approach ensures that the product is not only technically sound but also effectively communicated to your target audience.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to the product discovery process, the guidelines presented here offer a framework for tech PMs to navigate this complex landscape more effectively. By fostering early collaboration with design and engineering colleagues and maintaining clear communication throughout the development process, you’ll be better equipped to deliver products that truly resonate with your customers and drive business success.