Just like different fonts have different personalities, different colors also speak different feelings to each of us. Are you an energetic yellow like McDonald’s or are you reliable like the brown in UPS?

When I design logo’s for my clients, I start with designs in black and white. Often clients are very very excited when we get to the stage of adding in color, but color choice can be a very tricky thing. You want to make sure you stand out from your competition, but you also want to make sure you don’t alienate people looking for your wine bottle on the local wine store shelves. For instance, if you are known as a traditional wine with deep royal colors, you don’t want to change one of the labels to be neon colors. The customer will never be able to find your wine label out of the hundreds on the shelves.

Part of understanding color theory is grasping the colors of current logo’s that we see everyday. And here is an excellent breakdown by Ruby Media Corporation: