How to choose a color for your fintech brand
By: Vik Nikolova
Tags: Design, Fintech, Brand Design, Colors, Logo Design

Design

How to choose a color for your fintech brand

I studied the top 250 brands in finance of 2020 and summarized a list of the safest and most powerful colour choices and combinations Vik Nikolova Follow Apr 29 · 6 min read

Every designer knows the importance of choosing the right colours for their brand. There's a plethora of information available on the psychology of colour and which colour combinations are more visually pleasing, making it an overwhelming task to choose the right ones.

The history of colour preference studies is long, confusing and contradictory. (1). One of the studies looked into sex differences in colour preference. They found a consistent sex difference which may be linked to the evolution and further found that hue preference curves for males and females differ significantly. (2)

Other studies looked strictly at the emotion-colour relationship (3), which has been challenged by another study that speculates colour preferences are largely affected by a personal experience with objects of the same colour. (4)

In finance, you want your brand to express trust, security and respect. Whether you are a bank, a payment system, personal finance tool or advisory firm, the common theme is money. You want to show status and wealth, but empathy and loyalty at the same time. When it comes to money, people want to be sure they can trust whoever is handling them.

I studied the top 250 companies in finance for 2020 to see how they have employed colour in their design and how it relates to the studies of colour preference. Then I summarized a list of the safest colour choices, those that should be avoided or used with caution and secondary colours that could further alleviate the power of colour in your brand.

The Best Bets

The Color of Trust (Blue)

Logos of PayPal, Coinbase, Transferwise, Chase (left to right)

Blue is by far the most popular colour choice for brands — both for a primary and a secondary colour. Besides that blue is associated with trust, confidence and security, it is a universal colour that anyone can identify with.

In the study conducted by Hurlbert and Ling (2) both female and male participants reacted faster to blue contrasts.

Another important fact that makes blue a popular choice is its accessibility. Approximately 10% of the population is red-green colourblind, making blue a suitable colour everyone can get on board with. This is precisely the reason why Mark Zuckerberg choose blue for Facebook.

The Color of Money ( Green )

Logos of Grab, Bit Pesa, Chime and Paydiant (left to right)

Green gives off a subconscious feeling of wealth. This correlation doesn't necessarily come from money, as the only money that is green is the American dollar, which also varies in between green and yellow hues.

Green is the second most visually pleasing colour, as it is also extremely common in nature. We tend to see green in our environment, which is abundant. Because of the relation of the colour to nature, green is also considered healing and calming.

Grab's bright green colour matches their identity as it makes it appear humble and accessible, a company that is non-elitist.

The Royal Colour (Purple)

Purple symbolizes status, the future, as well as spirituality, and harmony. Unlike blue and green, purple is rarely seen in nature. This gives the feeling of a certain mystery and creativity around it.

Logos of Stripe, Starling Bank, NuBank and Spendesk (left to right)

Stripe (upper left) has chosen purple for their logo to show forward-thinking product development. In fact, they like to call it blurple as it has a significant amount of blue hues in it, therefore targeting double the emotions of a primary colour.

The Bold One (Black)

Black represents sophistication, elegance and bold mystery. It is necessary for every UI colour palette, however, its versatility makes it a great brand colour as well. It can be used hand in hand with white.

Looking at Revolut, the black logo brings a great contrast to their light web theme, while the white logo sits perfectly on their gradient debit cards and the dark mobile theme.

Logos of Revolut, Future Finance, Robinhood and Klarna (left to right)

Similarly, Klarna and Robinhood use very saturated accent colours in their brand identity— light pink and neon green respectively. Based on that, it makes more than perfect sense to tone it down a bit with their logos.

Colours to be cautious of

The Alerting (Red-Orange-Yellow)

Red's associations with stop signs, stoplights, brake lights, and fire equipment make it a colour that should be used sparingly and very strategically.

Orange is often associated with playful and energetic emotions, however, unlike green’s relation to wealth, orange is often considered cheap.

The presence of too much yellow activates the anxiety centre of the brain. Like red and orange, it’s able to stimulate and revitalise.

Gusto and Binance

You will rarely see bright or saturated variations of these colours in the fintech space. Gusto is using Guava as their brand colour — a mix of orange and pink, to create warmth and bring forward their human-centred mindset.

Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange company, which uses yellow to match the main subject on the platform — coins. They use it in combination with blacks and greys which is not heavy on the eyes.

Colours in the red-yellow region would be better used as secondary or accent colours, with lowered brightness in order to avoid the potential negative connotations.

The Innocent (Pink)

Pure pink is a mix of red and white. It is associated with innocence, youth and purity. It is a feminine colour and is culturally widely associated with girls.

It has been scientifically proven (2) that average female preference rises steeply to a sustained peak in the red-purple region, compared to blue-green for men. However, it is a colour that holds a lot of power on its own.

The digital insurer Lemonade has magenta as part of its brand identity, which is an extremely loud and saturated colour, making it a great fit for its target audience — millennials. Their branding strategy makes Lemonade seem like an easy solution to a complex and overwhelming problem.

Klarna, on the other hand, makes use of their pink accent colour to bring simplicity and easiness to their otherwise large and bold fonts.