The Hidden Meaning of Color

I believe that you can tell a lot about a brand or person based on how they present themselves. Whether through photo quality, clothing style, or digital graphic cohesiveness, aesthetics drive a large portion of my subconscious judgment. As the time drew nearer for me to take Auburn’s infamous Style and Design in Public Relations Messages class, I was so excited to create a personal branding suite and show the PR world who I am.

My preconceived notions about color

I’ve always known that color holds meaning. Warm versus cool, complimentary versus contrasting, and multicolored versus monochrome are all attributes to consider when making color choices. Before this class, however, I never thought beyond the colors that I was personally drawn to or those that seemed to look good together.

The power of subliminal messaging

As our class prepared to take to Adobe Illustrator and create our personal logos, we discussed color psychology. At first, I thought this meant the general emotional associations with color: yellow is happy, red is angry, and blue is calm. But the psychology of color is not that simple.

I learned that colors have different meanings depending on shade, placement, tone, and use in a project. Unconscious or otherwise, color can evoke emotions, inspire reactions, and change modes of thinking. It can excite or soothe your mood, raise or lower your blood pressure, and even whet your appetite! Immediately, I knew that I wanted to use color to express things in my branding suite that could not be said in a stylized logo or my font choice.

Applying color psychology to my brand

Once I knew how powerful a tool color could be, it came time to research what colors would make an appearance in my brand materials. Blue was my first choice as it’s my favorite color and is versatile in its hidden meanings. Blue symbolizes trust, intelligence, and confidence, which are all traits I want to advertise to future employers and professional peers. As you can imagine, things were looking a little boring with black, white, and a splash of blue here and there. This was when I decided to use two primary colors for my branding materials. I chose pink as a second primary color to add some femininity and youth to my branding suite, representing optimism and safety.

Finally, my branding suite was looking cohesive! The only problem was a slight baby shower feel with the repetitive blue and pink motifs. Enter an accent color: yellow. Yellow reinforces the idea of confidence associated with blue and optimism associated with pink while bringing in a new aspect of positivity. This took my newfound love of color psychology to the next level. Not only did yellow tie my two primary colors together seamlessly, but it also helped complete my goal of using color as a tool to showcase my personality traits without explicitly stating them.

Over the entirety of this semester, I have learned so much about the power of using color as a tool. Whether it be to reinforce the meaning of my typed work or introduce new subliminal ideas, color psychology is a skill I will use in the future for every design project I tackle!