The Impact of Typography & Colour on Brands

The importance of typography
If you want to find out more about the importance of typography, a great book to read is ‘Why Fonts Matter’ by Sarah Hyndman. Sarah provides a range of typographic insights into typographic personalities and how fonts can change the taste of food.

Different cultures react in different ways to the font-colour relationship and Amazon understands this completely. Their Kindle product gives the user the option to change fonts to suit personal preference. This gives users the opportunity to feel comfortable and to improve the overall user experience.

When creating brand identities at Liven Creative, we take a similar approach. Researching and thoroughly understanding how your target audience engages with typography on a daily basis helps us to make sound commercial decisions with regards to creating an effective and engaging brand identity.

The impact of colour
Today the impact and strategic importance of colour used by brands is well documented. Different colours emit different emotions to an individual, as well as culturally and in turn prompt both positive and negative responses.

Colour has the ability to make us feel angry, happy, calm and even hungry. So what colour should you consider when creating a brand identity within Europe?

Colours have both positive (P) and negative (N) emotional associations. To find the perfect colour for your brand identity a good place to start is by considering what is the primary emotion(s) you want to communicate.

Red
P – Strength, Warmth, Excitement
N – Defiance, Aggression, Strain

Blue
P – Intellect, Communication, Trust, Efficiency, Logic, Coolness, Calm
N – Coldness, Unfriendly, Lack of emotion

Yellow
P – Optimism, Confidence, Creativity, Friendliness
N – Fear, Depression, Anxiety

Green
P – Harmony, Balance, Environmental, Peace
N – Stagnation, Blandness

Purple
P – Vision, Luxury, Quality, Royalty
N – Introversion, Decadence, Inferiority

Orange
P – Physical comfort, Food, Warmth, Passion, Fun
N – Immaturity, Deprivation

Black
P – Sophistication, Security, Substance, Efficiency
N – Coldness, Heaviness, Menace

Leading brands use typography and colour successfully and consistently so that their brand can be recognised without content.

The combination of typography and colour is the foundations for any brand. The examples above demonstrate not only the importance of typography and colour within brands but also when used consistently over time, enables brands to remain in our subconscious, recognisable, even when not shown in their entirety.