Did you ever notice that a clear blue sky can do wonders for your mood? Or that a meeting in a white room can make you fall asleep? If so, you have seen just how much colours can affect our emotions. There is a study of this type of effects, and it is known as colour psychology. This is becoming much more recognized as far as how much colour can affect how consumers make purchases.
When you are thinking about your product and label designs, you should definitely consider color psychology. The label for your product is one of the key parts of your marketing, so the colours that you select for it can either make or break your monthly sales.
Below is a partial list of colours and what sort of emotional responses typically are associated with each colour. You should think about what sort of emotion you want to stir in the heart of your consumer. What sorts of colours are related to these emotions? Are you incorporating the correct colours into your labels and marketing materials. If not, you will want to consider working closely with your printing company and overhauling the colours of your labels ad product packaging.
- White: Relaxed, secure, complacent, light.
- Pink: Tranquil, relaxed.
- Green: Peace, happy, relaxed, less stressful.
- Light blue: Comfort.
- Blue: Creative, happy, safety
- Red: Energy, warmth, danger, failure, mistakes. Can actually increase the heart rate.
- Bright yellow: Danger, irritability
- Orange: Hunger, vitality
- Brown: Passivity, security, depression
Next, you will need to think about the colour of the text that you want to put on the label, and the colour of the label itself. If you choose poorly on the colour of the text, you really can hurt your marketing efforts. So you are going to want to think about this very carefully. The vital key to pairing the colour of your text and the background label colour is contrast. You need to have a good deal of contrast between the two. The more contrast there is, the more the text will be able to be read. The higher contrast also will limit the strain on the consumer’s eye. One of the most reliable ways to make this choice is to select a dark colour for the label, and a light color for the text. Generally, black on yellow is the most readable, followed by black on white, and yellow on black. The least readable is white on red.
Keep in mind that selecting the colours for your labels does not have to be difficult. There are many places you can go online that can help you to select the right colours. When you come up with your labels, there will probably be a base colour that you want to have. It could be the colour of your logo, or perhaps a colour that matches with the products that you are marketing.
If you put in enough thought about your label colour and your text, you should be able to come up with some excellent options.
Lawrence Reaves has an extensive background in business and is a contributing author for MaverickLabel.com, a custom printing company offering labels, custom printed ribbons, stickers of all sorts and warning labels. Go here to see how they can change the look of your business printing.