Is green greedy or genuine for branding your business? I’m going to look in detail at the most environmental color green.
What comes to mind when you see the color green in business? It’s commonly used with environmental issues today, but it is a mixed bag when it comes to understanding its associated words. Is green one of the most natural colors on planet earth? Does it have more positive than negative meanings? Let’s find out.
We don’t generally refer to green as glamorous or gorgeous like we would with the color red. So what makes green a great color for branding? If you haven’t done so already, and you want to consider other branding colors for your business, then you won’t want to miss the outstanding article called The Meaning Of Colors.
Discovering Green
Green has to be one of the first colors you innocently learn to mix as a child. With your pencils or felt tips, you suddenly use the color blue, by mistake you go over the edge of a drawing and into a yellow section; and wow, it makes suddenly make a new color, the color green!
Green is really grown in popularity in the last 20 years as its been associated widely with global issues. Currently more men prefer green to women.
25% Men chose green as their favourite color
From Live Science, 1,974 men and women were asked for their favourite color
19% Women chose green as their favourite color
Green Branding & Design
What positive and negative words are associated with green and businesses. Below on the left side are some of the negative words associated with the color green. Envious, boring, greedy, selfish and sickness aren’t going to encourage sales on a web site, but these aren’t always the main words that come to mind with green. To the right, are some positive meanings. Growth, freshness and health are really positive and used by the supermarket such as Asda. Depending on the shade of green will generally steer the direction of the word association. Have these meanings in mind when you start branding your business.
Green is a strong color for branding. It generally has a strong enough contrast to stand alone on a black or white background. This is always a consideration when you want your logo and main color to appear in various forms of medium, eg. white paper, brochures, business stands , signage, business cards and so on.
Green color code
It’s good to choose a “middle of the road” green which works well on most backgrounds in design. I would suggest using a web friendly Green color code.
e.g. Hex colour #33CC33 which is (51,204,51) in RGB or (70,0,100,0) in CMYK
I’ve used green in several designs over the years. One was a company extracting green moss of roofs. Another was for a cycling holiday villa. In both cases, these web sites have a strong association with the environment and the great outdoors. A few years back I created a web design for a Bournemouth roofing company. It was a total re-branding and web site build. The main purpose was to give it a family run business feel and to make sure it worked beautifully on mobile devices. You can see the roofing design using the color green on my portfolio for KJM Roofing here.
Green Color Scheme From Nature
Green fingered is an expression that means that a person is good with plants and gardening. You won’t see more variation of greens outside a garden.
Below is a beautiful mixture of green vegetation, shrubs and the apple is the centre piece. I’m going to extract some colours from the photo and see if i can produce a color palette I’m happy to use. Colors in nature can often deal you some interesting surprises. In this instant, nature is dictating a green color palette for my next website design.
Time needed: 10 minutes
How to extract color from a photo
- Take a photo
For stunning colors take a few digital photos in nature.
- Use an online color scheme tool
Get an online color scheme tool to extract the colors from the photo. I use coolors.co
- Upload photo
The third icon along is a camera icon, upload your photo there
- Lock in your chosen colors
Now start choosing the colors you want to keep extracted from your photos
- That’s it
You should now have a stunning green color palette!
I find using this process, always produces great results and fabulous color schemes. You can save the hex numbers for your next web design or re-branding project.
Green color psychology branding
Green branding in business is seen everywhere. What made National Trust choose green? Why would the Body Shop use green branding. Land Rover and John Deere? I think you get the idea; they want a particular perception. The psychology of green branding has been thought through before they ever considered the logo shapes and designs. You can learn from these companies a huge amount.
I suppose you could put most of the above brands into a few categories. Food outlets and forms of transportation connected with the land or environment. That narrows it down to a few areas of business.
Negative meanings for green include:
Green with envy. Or if you are the incredible Hulk, Green with Anger “You won’t like me when I’m green!” As mentioned above, pale green can also refer to being really sick and ill. Boredom is also associated with green. Selfish and money are also connected with it on occasions.
Positive meanings for green include:
Green is considered really healthy. Eating greens and having green grass suggest healthy body and a healthy lawn. So closely linked is hope natural growth, freshness and prosperity.
Other facts about green
Green vegetation, especially sprouts, cabbage, spinach, peas etc. are know as your greens. Which mother hasn’t at one point told her child to “eat up their greens”
“Green around the gills”, is an expression used for someone who is looking really ill.
The green party isn’t a Friday night rave for ill or envious people (see above), but a political party indicating a policy towards social justice and non-violence.
“Greener pastures” and “grass is always greener” are used in reference to something newer or a better expectation elsewhere.
“Green room” refers to a room in a theatre or studio where the guests will wait before coming on to the stage to perform.
Is The Color Green Overused?
In conclusion, green is ever popular as a color due to the global environmental concerns. So here is my question. Do you think green is overused? Is green suggesting a solution to climate issues, but its just a color, so it’s often misused? Let me know your comments about the meaning of the color green below.