Branding includes logos, fonts, and colours specifically chosen to help create a strong brand identity for a company. Recognition is the idea that people are looking for when it comes to marketing a company properly. It can establish mood, play into an emotion or associate culturally in some way. For instance, red and yellow are usually used for food branding and green is associated with the environment. The colour of a brand is the first characteristic a target market would see of a product, either on the shelf or online, that establishes a connection well before the other characteristics, like the font. What can make a brand memorable would be how often a colour is used in various media, in the logo, the storefront, uniforms, online, advertisements or packaging. The colour chosen for a brand is used to enhance the identity by reinforcing how the colours can connect with people through meaning and emotion.
There are some questions to keep in mind when choosing a colour for a brand. What is this product/brand? Who is the target market? What should they care about this product/brand? Who is the competition? How does this stand out?
A standard selection of brand colours is between three to four colours. This is for simplicity because five or six colours could look cluttered. But this depends on the logo design itself. The three colours to consider are grouped as follows: base, natural, and accent. A base colour is the main colour of the brand. It usually reflects the personality the most because it is used the most. The accent colour is the secondary colour that complements the base colour and reinforces the personality of the brand, but makes the brand design pop in some way. The neutral colour is the background colour that supports the overall design. Black is mostly used because it’s not overwhelming. Other colours like beige, grey, white and eggshell are used for the same reason.
Sometimes one colour can be enough for a brand. These are some case studies of three brands that use colours effectively for their branding.
Tiffany’s – Blue
Tiffany Blue is a specific shade of light blue that is strongly associated with the luxury jewelry company Tiffany & Co. The colour is also sometimes referred to as “Robin’s Egg Blue” due to its similarity to the blue-green colour of bird eggs.
Tiffany Blue was first associated with the company in 1845 when Charles Lewis Tiffany, the founder of Tiffany & Co., chose the colour for the cover of the company’s Tiffany Blue Box in 1837. The boxes were exclusive items to covet because the consumer could only have these boxes if it was purchased with a purchase of a Tiffany’s jewelry item, and not to be given to a consumer to protect the scarcity of the box and boost the emotional impact of collecting an item from the retailer. In 1906, the Blue Box was registered and trademarked to protect the colour for packaging and jewelry. Due to the high recognition of the blue colour, trademark protection was granted for “jewelry pouches with drawstrings” in Class 14 under the global Nice Classification system in the U.S.A. since 1998.
There’s no substantial reason why turquoise was chosen as a brand colour beyond it being popular among brides and the rise of popularity of turquoise in the 19th century. There were turtle-shaped brooches that brides used to wear as their memento. Since then, Tiffany Blue has become an iconic part of the brand’s identity and is closely associated with luxury, elegance, and sophistication.
Tiffany Blue HEX Code: #0ABAB5
The exact shade of Tiffany Blue is trademarked by Tiffany & Co., and it is often used in the company’s branding, packaging, and marketing materials. It has also become popular in wedding and event decor, fashion, and interior design, with many people recognizing it as a symbol of timeless style and refinement. The Pantone colour for the blue is “1837 Blue”, based on the founding year of the company.
No Name Brands – Yellow and Black
No Name is an economical grocery brand from Loblaws that started in Canada to help consumer demand for more affordable grocery items. The brand was designed to be as simplistic as possible, offering affordable food with a “no frills” fancy appearance. It followed what you see is what you get business model, and if the produce was a bit misshapen, like a lumpy apple or a non-perfect circle peach, it was still sellable and at a low cost that people liked.
When it was taking off in the 1980s, Loblaws pitchman Mike Nichols would appear in commercials with two carts with the same items. One cart had commercial brands, the other had all No Name brands. The difference was the 30% difference in price.
The brand design was by Don Watts in 1978 for the Loblaws Company Ltd for 16 generic packaging. The branding was bold black Helvetica font and a yellow background to attract customers and stand out. They didn’t choose red because it was too dramatic, and blue would have been confusing to their other brand, Blue Ribbon, which is a premier brand. The red colour was then used for the President’s Choice brand at Loblaws.
No Name Yellow HEX Code: #FADC00
The yellow became synonymous with the brand and a cult favourite for many Canadians. The yellow is a basic yellow ink that didn’t cost extra to produce since it wasn’t a special order or needed to be mixed in any way when mass-produced.
In 2019, when No Name was launching the Simple Check, which advertised ten items not found in No Name products, like MSG, artificial colours, and hydrogenated oils. It was the first multi-channel campaign for the brand that crossed social media, television, print, radio, and OOH designed by John St in Toronto. The branding was an extension of what made the packaging so noticeable, with a yellow background and bold black Helvetica font pointing out the obvious. For instance, their website said “website,” a taxi was painted yellow with “taxi” on the side, and a subway would have a vinyl wrap that explained the Simple Check. The campaign relied on deadpan quips and self-referential humour that made the commercial have a small pop culture moment in Canada. The grocery store even had merchandise that matched the oddball humour.
this is a no name® commercial about simple check™
30 second commercial about no name® Simple Check™ products
Other examples of brands with distinctive colour in their branding:
Veuve Clicquot – Golden Yellow
This champagne bottle is known for the little golden yellow label since 1876. The bottle design and packaging are reflected in their in-store branding. The V. Clicquot P. Werlé labels were distinctive on the shelves, but they were used to distinguish between dry and sweet champagne in British marketplaces. The popularity of champagne with less sugar coincided with the popularity of the yellow label. This also coincided with the other branding the champagne bottles were known to have, for instance, the green wax seal with golden flecks for branding a hundred years before the yellow label.
Cadbury’s – Purple
Cadbury is a chocolate confectionery company started in 1824 in Birmingham, England. It went through many mergers with J.S. Fry & Sons in 1919, Schweppes in 1969 and recently with Mondelēz International. The logo was just a wordmark in 1827. The company name was on a brown block like a chocolate bar in 1867. By 1921, the logo was redesigned to resemble William Cadbury’s signature, according to most experts. The “C” represents the swirl of milk in the chocolate. The purple colour was used for the first time and ever since.
Pizza Pizza – Orange
Pizza Pizza is a Canadian pizza house serving pizza fans since 1967. It has a very strong brand and marketing, but this is about their visual brand identity and not the earworm jingle of their phone number. Pizza Pizza has a simple logo and bright orange as its dominant colour. Bright orange is an eye-grabbing colour that catches your attention. Pizza Pizza uses its bright orange on its pizza boxes, in-store design, advertising, and online.
Starbucks – Green
Starbucks uses a variation of greens for a fresh and inviting look. The green has been used since 1987 on the circle encasing the siren. The corporate green is referred to as Siren Green.
Home Depot – Orange
Home Depot’s logo was designed by Don Watt. The design is based on a box crate with the stencil company name on the side. When the founders, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, wanted their warehouse DIY store to have a “no-frills” simple look in 1979. It’s now connected to the value and energy.
Bell – Blue
The telecommunications company is “the blue one” in Canada, opposing the “red one” (Rogers) and the “green one” (Telus). The logo originally had a bell to represent the Alexander Bell telephone company. Around 1977, the logo was redesigned by Colin McMichael for a more contemporary look. By the direction of the design manager, Don Black, to simplify the logo to a wordmark and a modern blue colour. The colour is referred to as Bell Blue.
UPS – Brown
UPS once had a slogan that said, “What can brown do for you?” in the early 2000s. The brown colour used, Pullman Brown, by UPS is trademarked and is prohibited for use if in direct competition with UPS. Since the early 1900s, the United Parcel Service has had marketing campaigns that used brown in branding from advertising to uniforms. The company started as the American Messenger Company by two Seattle teenagers, Claude Ryan and Jim Casey, who had red and black cars, then a yellow car when they were advised to paint the cars a more conspicuous colour. When the company was taken over by Charles Soderstorm, the company was branded as UPS. The car colour was going to be changed to the commonly used colour of black, but it required too much upkeep. It was changed to the brand colour from the Pullman Company’s brown colour because of its conservative colour for stores. The Pullman Company was a popular sleeping compartment railroad company that was once known for its luxurious boxcars for long distance travel. It was once a symbol of style, elegance and first-class travel. In 1988, UPS trademarked their brand colour as “UPS Brown.”
The elephant in the room
When companies trademark colours, it is to limit the use of the colour and protect the brand so that consumers can connect that colour to that service/product. It doesn’t mean that you can’t use that colour to paint a wall, sew a dress or dye your hair orange. It means that if the colour was a prime focus of the company’s identity, you can’t use it to create a similar product/service with that colour. I also have to remind you that I say this as a graphic designer, not as a lawyer. #notalawyer. Colour trademarking is difficult to do to avoid monopolies over a colour. The main colour is a recognizable identity to the brand that could be protected for limited use in the commercial market, but a secondary colour, like an accent colour, would be difficult to trademark.
Westland, Stephen, and Maggie Maggio. “Brand Colors.” Universal Principles of Color: 100 Key Concepts for Understanding, Analyzing and Working With Color, Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc., Beverly, MA, 2023, pp. 36–37.
Under The Moonlight 
Branding includes logos, fonts, and colours specifically chosen to help create a strong brand identity for a company. Recognition is the idea that people are looking for when it comes to marketing a company properly. It can establish mood, play into an emotion or associate culturally in some way. For instance, red and yellow are usually used for food branding and green is associated with the environment. The colour of a brand is the first characteristic a target market would see of a product, either on the shelf or online, that establishes a connection well before the other characteristics, like the font. What can make a brand memorable would be how often a colour is used in various media, in the logo, the storefront, uniforms, online, advertisements or packaging. The colour chosen for a brand is used to enhance the identity by reinforcing how the colours can connect with people through meaning and emotion.
There are some questions to keep in mind when choosing a colour for a brand. What is this product/brand? Who is the target market? What should they care about this product/brand? Who is the competition? How does this stand out?
A standard selection of brand colours is between three to four colours. This is for simplicity because five or six colours could look cluttered. But this depends on the logo design itself. The three colours to consider are grouped as follows: base, natural, and accent. A base colour is the main colour of the brand. It usually reflects the personality the most because it is used the most. The accent colour is the secondary colour that complements the base colour and reinforces the personality of the brand, but makes the brand design pop in some way. The neutral colour is the background colour that supports the overall design. Black is mostly used because it’s not overwhelming. Other colours like beige, grey, white and eggshell are used for the same reason.
Sometimes one colour can be enough for a brand. These are some case studies of three brands that use colours effectively for their branding.
Tiffany’s – Blue
Tiffany Blue is a specific shade of light blue that is strongly associated with the luxury jewelry company Tiffany & Co. The colour is also sometimes referred to as “Robin’s Egg Blue” due to its similarity to the blue-green colour of bird eggs.
Right: A Christmas tree with a blue bag hanging from it by Martin Grobisen on Unsplash
Tiffany Blue was first associated with the company in 1845 when Charles Lewis Tiffany, the founder of Tiffany & Co., chose the colour for the cover of the company’s Tiffany Blue Box in 1837. The boxes were exclusive items to covet because the consumer could only have these boxes if it was purchased with a purchase of a Tiffany’s jewelry item, and not to be given to a consumer to protect the scarcity of the box and boost the emotional impact of collecting an item from the retailer. In 1906, the Blue Box was registered and trademarked to protect the colour for packaging and jewelry. Due to the high recognition of the blue colour, trademark protection was granted for “jewelry pouches with drawstrings” in Class 14 under the global Nice Classification system in the U.S.A. since 1998.
There’s no substantial reason why turquoise was chosen as a brand colour beyond it being popular among brides and the rise of popularity of turquoise in the 19th century. There were turtle-shaped brooches that brides used to wear as their memento. Since then, Tiffany Blue has become an iconic part of the brand’s identity and is closely associated with luxury, elegance, and sophistication.
HEX Code: #0ABAB5
The exact shade of Tiffany Blue is trademarked by Tiffany & Co., and it is often used in the company’s branding, packaging, and marketing materials. It has also become popular in wedding and event decor, fashion, and interior design, with many people recognizing it as a symbol of timeless style and refinement. The Pantone colour for the blue is “1837 Blue”, based on the founding year of the company.
No Name Brands – Yellow and Black
No Name is an economical grocery brand from Loblaws that started in Canada to help consumer demand for more affordable grocery items. The brand was designed to be as simplistic as possible, offering affordable food with a “no frills” fancy appearance. It followed what you see is what you get business model, and if the produce was a bit misshapen, like a lumpy apple or a non-perfect circle peach, it was still sellable and at a low cost that people liked.
When it was taking off in the 1980s, Loblaws pitchman Mike Nichols would appear in commercials with two carts with the same items. One cart had commercial brands, the other had all No Name brands. The difference was the 30% difference in price.
The brand design was by Don Watts in 1978 for the Loblaws Company Ltd for 16 generic packaging. The branding was bold black Helvetica font and a yellow background to attract customers and stand out. They didn’t choose red because it was too dramatic, and blue would have been confusing to their other brand, Blue Ribbon, which is a premier brand. The red colour was then used for the President’s Choice brand at Loblaws.
HEX Code: #FADC00
The yellow became synonymous with the brand and a cult favourite for many Canadians. The yellow is a basic yellow ink that didn’t cost extra to produce since it wasn’t a special order or needed to be mixed in any way when mass-produced.
In 2019, when No Name was launching the Simple Check, which advertised ten items not found in No Name products, like MSG, artificial colours, and hydrogenated oils. It was the first multi-channel campaign for the brand that crossed social media, television, print, radio, and OOH designed by John St in Toronto. The branding was an extension of what made the packaging so noticeable, with a yellow background and bold black Helvetica font pointing out the obvious. For instance, their website said “website,” a taxi was painted yellow with “taxi” on the side, and a subway would have a vinyl wrap that explained the Simple Check. The campaign relied on deadpan quips and self-referential humour that made the commercial have a small pop culture moment in Canada. The grocery store even had merchandise that matched the oddball humour.
Other examples of brands with distinctive colour in their branding:
Veuve Clicquot – Golden Yellow
This champagne bottle is known for the little golden yellow label since 1876. The bottle design and packaging are reflected in their in-store branding. The V. Clicquot P. Werlé labels were distinctive on the shelves, but they were used to distinguish between dry and sweet champagne in British marketplaces. The popularity of champagne with less sugar coincided with the popularity of the yellow label. This also coincided with the other branding the champagne bottles were known to have, for instance, the green wax seal with golden flecks for branding a hundred years before the yellow label.
Cadbury’s – Purple
Cadbury is a chocolate confectionery company started in 1824 in Birmingham, England. It went through many mergers with J.S. Fry & Sons in 1919, Schweppes in 1969 and recently with Mondelēz International. The logo was just a wordmark in 1827. The company name was on a brown block like a chocolate bar in 1867. By 1921, the logo was redesigned to resemble William Cadbury’s signature, according to most experts. The “C” represents the swirl of milk in the chocolate. The purple colour was used for the first time and ever since.
Pizza Pizza – Orange
Pizza Pizza is a Canadian pizza house serving pizza fans since 1967. It has a very strong brand and marketing, but this is about their visual brand identity and not the earworm jingle of their phone number. Pizza Pizza has a simple logo and bright orange as its dominant colour. Bright orange is an eye-grabbing colour that catches your attention. Pizza Pizza uses its bright orange on its pizza boxes, in-store design, advertising, and online.
Starbucks – Green
Starbucks uses a variation of greens for a fresh and inviting look. The green has been used since 1987 on the circle encasing the siren. The corporate green is referred to as Siren Green.
Home Depot – Orange
Home Depot’s logo was designed by Don Watt. The design is based on a box crate with the stencil company name on the side. When the founders, Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, wanted their warehouse DIY store to have a “no-frills” simple look in 1979. It’s now connected to the value and energy.
Bell – Blue
The telecommunications company is “the blue one” in Canada, opposing the “red one” (Rogers) and the “green one” (Telus). The logo originally had a bell to represent the Alexander Bell telephone company. Around 1977, the logo was redesigned by Colin McMichael for a more contemporary look. By the direction of the design manager, Don Black, to simplify the logo to a wordmark and a modern blue colour. The colour is referred to as Bell Blue.
UPS – Brown
UPS once had a slogan that said, “What can brown do for you?” in the early 2000s. The brown colour used, Pullman Brown, by UPS is trademarked and is prohibited for use if in direct competition with UPS. Since the early 1900s, the United Parcel Service has had marketing campaigns that used brown in branding from advertising to uniforms. The company started as the American Messenger Company by two Seattle teenagers, Claude Ryan and Jim Casey, who had red and black cars, then a yellow car when they were advised to paint the cars a more conspicuous colour. When the company was taken over by Charles Soderstorm, the company was branded as UPS. The car colour was going to be changed to the commonly used colour of black, but it required too much upkeep. It was changed to the brand colour from the Pullman Company’s brown colour because of its conservative colour for stores. The Pullman Company was a popular sleeping compartment railroad company that was once known for its luxurious boxcars for long distance travel. It was once a symbol of style, elegance and first-class travel. In 1988, UPS trademarked their brand colour as “UPS Brown.”
The elephant in the room
When companies trademark colours, it is to limit the use of the colour and protect the brand so that consumers can connect that colour to that service/product. It doesn’t mean that you can’t use that colour to paint a wall, sew a dress or dye your hair orange. It means that if the colour was a prime focus of the company’s identity, you can’t use it to create a similar product/service with that colour. I also have to remind you that I say this as a graphic designer, not as a lawyer. #notalawyer. Colour trademarking is difficult to do to avoid monopolies over a colour. The main colour is a recognizable identity to the brand that could be protected for limited use in the commercial market, but a secondary colour, like an accent colour, would be difficult to trademark.
Brands Used for the Case Studies:
No Name Brands
TIffany’s
Reference:
Westland, Stephen, and Maggie Maggio. “Brand Colors.” Universal Principles of Color: 100 Key Concepts for Understanding, Analyzing and Working With Color, Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc., Beverly, MA, 2023, pp. 36–37.
The Print Shop Carleton University – The Importance of Brand Colours and How to Pick Them
Tiffany’s – Tiffany Blue®: A Color So Famous, It’s Trademarked
Osgoode Hall Law School – York University – The Controversial Tiffany Blue
CBC Archives – When Canadians were first introduced to No Name products
CBC Archives – Loblaws opens first No Frills store in 1978
Canadian Grocer – A simple advertising approach for No Name’s Simple Check product line
Veuve Clicquot – Madame Clicquot
Home Depot – BEFORE THE ORANGE SIGN: BUILDING THE HOME DEPOT BRAND
Fabrik – Cadbury logo history: Exploring the Cadbury chocolate logo
Starbucks – Color
BCE (Bell Canada Enterprises) – About History
The Hill – Brown wasn’t always UPS’s color: Here’s why it is now
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