Have you ever wondered how or why companies choose what their main brand colors will be? Well if you haven’t, you will now. 

Since I am not a graphic or visual designer, I have always thought the color choices were strictly driven by aesthetics or possibly what colors were trending at that time. But after learning more about color theory, it is clear that different colors elicit certain emotions.

For instance, many financial institutions, like Chase, American Express, VISA, PayPal, Bank of America, and Citibank, use the color blue in their logo and throughout their web/mobile sites. In learning more about color theory and its use in design, blue is the color of trust, dependability, and reliability, all of the emotions that one would want to feel regarding the institution managing their money.

To learn more about the use of color psychology in logo design, check out the “Color Emotion Guide” below from thelogocompany.net. For a more interactive exercise, you can also go to https://99designs.com/logo-design/psychology-of-color for a color calculator.