

The Most Powerful Colors in the World ...And How You Make The Next Ones - dariusmonsef
http://www.colourlovers.com/business/blog/2010/09/15/the-most-powerful-colors-in-the-world
As a YC W10 startup, we were lucky to have dinner with Zuckerberg and I asked him afterwards why he chose that blue for Facebook... Cause he's color blind.  Not a majestic response about how color influences mood, buying habits, etc.<p>He used a color that was personally best for him.  And a lot of the top brands in the world now, started in garages &#38; workshops... where the branding research consisted of a couple rounds "what if we..." before a name was born and then a logo &#38; design.<p>My favorite example of this is Mercedes.  The brand now stands for luxury cultivates a significant vibe... but why did the founder call it that? Simply, he named the company after his daughter... and now people name their daughters after the car!<p>A lot of YC companies get greif for their names (most.ly the ly.ly ones) but how much does a name / brand have on the actual product being successful.<p>I think it can have an influence, but at the end of the day... the quality of what you build will determine its success.<p>With that in mind, my fellow hackers &#38; founders... from a guy that runs a website about color... Be more adventurous with your colors. Have some fun.
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Gibbon
What's interesting is how little thought seems to go into differentiating web
sites through colour palette.

It's a common consideration in other industries to establish a clear colour
choice as a method of differentiation. Take Coke red, for example, versus
Pepsi blue. Or green John Deere tractors or yellow Dewalt power tools. Any new
entrant would be wise to pick a specific colour and stick to it.

Looking at the colour maps here, were I to start a social network, I would go
for a scheme in the yellow/orange/red spectrum to separate myself from the
dogpile of sites lumped in the blue area. Likewise, for a blogging host,
something in the greens or red/purples would be good.

It looks like the location and social news sites are doing a better job of
differentiating themselves.

Also take a look at Google and Microsoft, clearly "rainbow" companies. Apple
used to be a rainbow company but has done an excellent job of shifting their
palette over to the monochromatics. Not only is it as far away from rainbow as
you can get, but the monochromatics are associated with "expensive","premium"
and "well designed".

I think rainbow palettes actually kind of backfire when it comes to big
companies. It's like they try too hard to say "hey look at us, we're so fun!"
while also looking unfocused. However, overemphasis on one colour can backfire
too.. just look at Yahoo and all their purple crap. They just seem completely
dorky.

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tyng
Rainbow colour looks a bit cheap imo - for Google, because all its services
are free for consumers, it plays fine.

If I'm starting a social media company though, I probably wouldn't want to
venture out too far away from blue - simply because it's the easiest way for
users to associate it as a mainstream social media company, i.e. alongside the
Facebook-Twitter-Linkedin-Foursquare league, unless you are competing head on
with any of these big four. I know this is a cheap strategy, but it also makes
it cheaper for you to establish yourself in the market.

Or, just pick your favorite color, much easier and you'll always be
comfortable with.

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pigbucket
Blue really does get around. It's associated, in my troubled mind, with
pornographic movies, melancholic music, police forces, and super-cleanness
(the whiter-than-white, bluey whiteness promised by Daz laundry detergent),
and the word "blue" seems especially popular among the names of colors for
branding: Bluetooth, Blu-ray, Jetblue, Big Blue, Blue Cross, even Blaupunkt.

Promiscuous Blue would be a great name for a band.

~~~
cperciva
_the whiter-than-white, bluey whiteness promised by Daz laundry detergent_

Random trivia: In order to combat the fact that clothing gradually turns
yellow as fibres are damaged, modern laundry detergents contain dyes which
fluoresce blue under ultraviolet light. The "bluey whiteness" really is
exactly that!

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jrwoodruff
You can actually buy bluing agent for your laundry, it's pretty old school,
but actually adds a bit of blue dye for the same effect.

<http://www.mrsstewart.com/>

~~~
cperciva
_adds a bit of blue dye for the same effect_

Blue dye != blue fluorescent dye. Blue dye simply absorbs non-blue light; blue
fluorescent dye absorbs UV and emits blue light.

~~~
jrwoodruff
Ok then, a similar effect :)

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_corbett
I incidentally find <http://www.colourlovers.com> and specifically
<http://www.colourlovers.com/web/trends> very useful in the design process

~~~
hartror
Yeah colour lovers is my first stop on the inspiration trail when I start a
new design. Browsing colour pallets gives me a starting point from which to
build from without borrowing too heavily from others work directly.

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ugh
Blue is also a popular choice with Apple’s icon designers:
<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/dock.png>

~~~
mccutchen
Not just with Apple's icon designers, but with icon designers targeting OS X
as a whole:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/mccutchen/4293401589/>

(At least with the designers of the icons for the applications I use most
often.)

~~~
jcl
And not just icons... the OS X interface generally marks interactive elements
in blue (folders, buttons, scrollbars, highlights etc.) -- living up to the
"Aqua" name. The default Windows 7 interface also has a bluish tint, although
not nearly as extreme as it did with XP.

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sahillavingia
I think that this has a lot to do with the emotions felt when thinking of the
color red (fire, exciting, passion) or blue (calm, simple, soothing). It's
much harder to define a brand with green (leaves? slime?), as people have
become used to the above two.

From experience, it's also much easier to combine red and blue with a
grayscale palette (iTunes icon, twitter to name two), which may also
contribute to their popularity.

~~~
dariusmonsef
Or red (anger, blood, propaganda) or blue (cold, sad, depressing) ...we all
have different personal associations with color... And add on top of that
cultural.

As for green (money, health, fresh)

~~~
public_nme
I would add that red implies danger. Using the metaphor of an icon as a
button, no one wants to push the red button. It might launch the nukes.

~~~
jacquesm
funny use of colour:

<http://www.gursimran.com/showcase>

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andrewl
NASA's Ames Research Center has a fascinating site called "Using Color in
Information Display Graphics":

<http://colorusage.arc.nasa.gov/>

It has articles, tools, a bibliography, and an entire section called
"Designing with Blue":

<http://colorusage.arc.nasa.gov/blue_2.php>

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boredguy8
Does anyone know how culturally broad this is? The examples tend to be USian
or highly western companies.

~~~
kreek
Blue dominates as a color in the west as it represents 'corporate' and 'trust'
to western eyes (if you ever want to got through customs faster at the airport
wear a blue shirt). I'd imagine if you did the same ting for Asian companies
the predominant color would be red.

<http://webdesign.about.com/od/color/a/bl_colorculture.htm>

~~~
Gibbon
For web design, monitors tend to skew towards bluish white light, making blue
designs look more appealing.

~~~
frossie
Doesn't explain the popularity on that list of orange. I have no fondness for
orange (my HN topcolor is a soothing 7BB6F0) and have always been a bit of a
loss to figure out why it figures so much. It also tends to be the _same_
shade of orange - whereas at least with blue you get a bigger range.

~~~
Gibbon
Yes it does. Orange is the complement to blue so orange will also look good on
a blue screen.

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wccrawford
The most powerful? Or the easiest to make good designs with?

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dariusmonsef
Is it really easier to make a good design with Blue vs Green? I agree it is
easier, but not from an execution perspective... but rather from an
inspiration one. With so many blue sites, it's much easier to get "inspired"
and model after others.

~~~
superkarn
Interestingly not every language distinguishes blue from green:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language)

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MPiccinato
That was an interesting article. I was completely unaware how many major
brands use a similar color.

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aneth
Classmates.com is rated higher than Tudou or Netflix.

I didn't realize they are still a force. Didn't facebook solve this problem?

