Is pink sweet and pretty or too naive for a business? I’m going to look in detail at the meaning behind the provocative color pink.
The color pink is associated from your birth. Blue for boys. Pink for girls. Well it was in the 1970’s when I was growing up. This is without a doubt going to have a measure of some sub-conscience views in a percentage of your visitors and clients. Pink is the least popular color for men with only 1% choosing it as a favourite color.
Can pink be used in a positive way with branding across the board? Yes it can. Let’s look at some of the businesses that have done this well and learn what works. Beauticians, feminine clothing, wedding shops and magazines have used the color pink successfully.
You may notice that pink tends to go darker to appeal to older audiences and lighter for younger, immature audiences. That’s a pretty over simplifying rule of what is found out there in marketing terms.
Pink Branding & Design
The psychological meaning of the color pink tends to be connected to childhood. Do you remember seeing siblings and friends babies’ bedrooms being painted in pink long time before the baby was born? So the challenge is to move pink away from the instinctive start of life it has in many of our minds. Which color would best represent your business? You may want to try a different color, so when you have finished reading this page, head on over to our main article called The Meaning Of Colors. There you will find a full review of all the colours required for branding your business and the reasons why certain colours work. Pink is of course a combination of red and white. So you may want to check out our section on red, as a lot of the principles on red will apply to pink too.
Pink has some interesting characteristics. In design it works really well with feminine websites like bridal dresses and alterations. Possible a seductive color too. I used this knowledge on designing for a seamstress and dressmaker based in Bournemouth. Take a look at her web site I built last year in my portfolio. The Website is called Bridal Alterations Studio.
Pink Color Scheme From Nature
In this series of articles I’ve consistently used nature for inspiration. I’ve challenged myself to find each color in nature. So what was the goal of this? My goal was to adopt a new color scheme from the photo. Pink is by far the easiest color to find in a garden of flowers. Once I picked a digital photo (see below)
I then upload it to a color tool like coolors.co and if you click “Generate”. You will then see an icon of a camera (top right). From here I will upload my photo. I then extract the complimentary color palette.
Here is my example.
The hex numbers can be used in Photoshop or in a CSS style sheet. Feel free to use the colors in your next design and let me know where I can view it in the comments below.
Pink color psychology branding
Which businesses come to mind when you think of pink branding? Victoria secret logo is clearly pink. T-Mobile used a very strong saturated hot pink. These popular brands have successfully used the color pink. Johnson and Johnson provide baby products and use a lighter pink. Benefit also use a light pink possibly a “bubble gum pink” while Barbie and Dunkin Donuts use an almost magenta pink.
1% Men chose pink as their favourite color
Live Science
7% Women chose pink as their favourite color
Negative meanings for pink include:
Is pink, impulsive and unrealistic? Do you have any negative thoughts associated with pink? We mentioned earlier it could be connected with naive, immature or even babyish.
Positive meanings for pink include:
However pink is often seen in lipsticks and romantic items. Flowers, love, compassion are all connected with pink. Warmth, hope, sweetness and calming pink. It’s certainly considered a feminine color by many with 7 times more women than men choosing it as a favourite color.
Other facts about pink
“Tickled pink” means being extremely happy.
Alecia Beth Moore, is better known professionally as Pink
“Rose tinted glasses” is used when everything you see looks pretty, so often refers to being unrealistic
So here is a pink color question for you.
Does pink make the boys wink? Is it a romantic seductive color or is this now just a myth. We would love to hear from you so feel free to comment your thoughts below.