Color Trends - Bold and Energetic

Popularity of colors among designers and consumers can vary from year to year. To keep pace with color trends, vinyl film manufacturers and paint companies make a conscious effort to gauge changes in the marketplace. Colors from both the fashion and interior décor industries have impacted color selection in the automotive market and in corporate graphics. Bold, bright, warm and energetic “Flame Scarlet” is one of the top colors for 2020. This fiery red hue exudes confidence. Other prominent colors in the fields of corporate identity, web design and retail graphics as well as with today’s consumer include, but are not limited to coral pink, saffron, chive and white.

In the automotive, interior décor and fashion industry, colors in the orange family have grown in popularity over the last ten to twenty years. Some of these trendy colors include mixtures of orange and copper, orange and yellow and orange and red.

Another color trend is mixture of different colors to create new and more complex variations of the “Oldies but Goodies.” In the automotive industry, black has always been popular. At one time it was the only color available. In Henry Ford’s day, when you bought a car, it was black. And then, there was only one black. 

Today’s automotive color selection includes a variety of blacks, subtly tinted with blues and greens and brown, for a more refined look with all of the complex underlying flavorings that you might find in a fine wine. How chic! To most of people; however, black is black. When marketing to the majority of America, though, this should tell you that the consumer’s tastes have become more complex and sophisticated over the years.

Color Matters

The late, great comedian Flip Wilson popularized the phase, “What you see, is what you get.” Little did he know that his words would be used to describe how our visual experiences influence our purchasing behavior and why color is so important in marketing efforts.

What researchers have discovered is that 90% of us unconsciously make decisions of what we like and what we don’t like based on color and other visual factors. In more than half of our buying decisions, when selecting one product versus another, color is the deciding factor. So you see, Flip was right…what you see, is what you get – if “getting” is what you got at the store.

Just as color is critical to the success in stimulating impulse buys, it’s also critical to the effectiveness of our signage. According to the Institute of Color Research, within two minutes of an initial viewing, the viewer subconsciously makes an assessment, for better or for worse, about us, about our businesses and about our products.

“The primary goal in designing signage and graphics is to attract attention and create that favorable first impression,” says Guy Leigh, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Nekoosa. “How the designer uses color determines whether the graphics are noticed or are lost in sea of visual clutter that besieges our senses.”

After capturing the viewer’s attention, Leigh says the designer’s next goal is to use color and other design elements to help increase brand recognition and bolster the brand’s overall identity. “In an effective graphics program, color will be inextricably bound to the brand name and all of the other factors that comprise a brand’s identity,” says Leigh. “Coca-Cola red is a perfect example.” 

“Color excites our imagination,” Leigh adds. “Let’s face it, black and white is boring. That’s why a color ad has at least 40% more readership than the same ad in black and white. The full color images in an ad are also retained in the reader’s mind much longer. That’s why color sells.”   

When designing in-store and P.O.P. signage, Leigh believes that having eye-catching graphics is critical to sales success. Research conducted by POPAI, the Point-Of-Purchase Industry Association, determined that more than 70% of purchasing decisions are impulse buys.