Why orange logos are worth considering for your business.
Summary/Overview
Along with logo shape and typography, logo colors are one of the most impactful and important elements of your logo, especially if you integrate a power color like orange. But is an orange logo right for your brand?
Before you decide whether to explore orange logos for your business, read this quick primer on what orange logos convey to your audience, examples of powerful orange logos, and how to successfully make an orange logo for free.
The symbolism and impact of orange logos.
You don’t have to be a color psychologist to know that orange is anything but a wallflower color. Bold and happy, it’s known to be associated with playfulness and thrills, and, according to the Ignyte branding agency, it’s “stimulatory, conjuring feelings of excitement, enthusiasm, and warmth.” Other words used to describe the vibrant color are fun, courageous, creative, confident, friendly, energetic, value-oriented, comforting, and related to shelter or home.
With so much joy and positivity going for it, it’s no wonder that the color orange is used by successful brands like The Home Depot, Nickelodeon, Tide, Bitly, Etsy, Dunkin’, and Reese’s.
Are orange logos right for your business?
Everyone wants positivity associated with their business, but this desire doesn’t automatically mean an orange logo is right for your brand. With a literal rainbow of color choices, it’s important to review your brand identity, get very clear on your brand’s personality and core values, and consider your color options with these factors in mind.
If you’re working with experienced graphic designers, they can help you understand more about various colors and what emotions they inspire in people. Or you can do some quick research on color psychology.
To get you started, here’s a rundown of some core positive traits of other commonly used colors. If you’re considering any color, you should do a deeper dive and learn the potential negative connotations and ask yourself whether the feelings these colors conjure are in line with your brand:
- Red: One of the most powerful logo colors, this primary color is an energetic color and can be seen as provocative, with hints of excitement, arousal, and, in some instances, danger.
- Yellow/gold: Not surprisingly, the bright, primary color of yellow inspires cheerfulness with its radiant sunshine hues. Suggestive of energy and warmth, it’s eye-catching, too. It’s also intense, so a little goes a long way. Meanwhile, its cousin gold suggests stability, opulence, and wealth.
- Blue: A color often found in nature, like the sky and water, this color tends to elicit feelings of calmness, serenity, sympathy, and compassion.
- Green: This peaceful, nature-y hue triggers the brain in positive ways, often associated with calmness, nature, health, well-being, and growth.
- Purple: This rich, majestic color is often associated with wealth, royalty, mysticism, luxury, divinity, and spiritual endeavors.
- Pink: The stereotypical color for baby girl garb is also known to be soft, feminine, calming, and associated with romance.
- Brown: A literal earth color, brown is known to symbolize stability, reserve, strength, and wisdom. It can also be perceived as dull if not used wisely.
- Black: This power color isn’t a color at all. Black has a wide-ranging interpretation, ranging from elegance and sophistication to mysterious, dark, and even threatening or sad.
- White: All the stereotypical imagery applies here: purity, newness, pristineness, faith, and lightness can all be attributed to white. Of course, a white logo can only work in combination with another color or black.
If you still think the energetic, playful power color orange is perfect for your company logo, it’s time to hone in the additional logo elements that will complete your orange logo ideas.
Complementary colors to use with orange logos.
Plenty of high-quality orange logos stand up loud and proud without any additional colors. But a pop of contrast can also be powerful. Take FedEx for example. Combined with purple (a fantastic complementary color for orange) and strong typography, each word stands out yet works together. Then there’s the white space around and within the words, which allows for breathing room. It also perpetuates confident movement through an arrow shape cleverly nestled between the “E” and the “x.”
Other logos that combine orange and other colors are Fanta and Firefox (orange and calming dark blue), Harley-Davidson (orange, perfection-oriented white, and prestigious black), and MasterCard (orange and red, two attention-grabbing power colors).
If you’re considering adding other colors to your orange logo ideas, first select the orange you like best. Options range from light orange to bright orange to burnt orange and beyond. Then see what kind of complementary color combinations pair well with your orange.
Common partners for orange include other shades of orange, red, yellow, blue, purple, white or cream, green, teal (especially if you want a vintage logo), and with caution black; the latter can easily turn Halloween-y if you’re not careful, but Harley-Davidson has done a good job of sidestepping the dilemma.
If you have an orange color in mind and would like some help finding complementary hues, use Adobe Express’s free color palette generator to get a variety of options.
Logo shapes to consider when conceptualizing your orange logo.
Once you’re clear on the colors you want to use for your logo, it’s time to consider logo shapes. Shapes, too, have psychological impact on the beholder, so you should do some research here and approach your shape selections with intention and knowledge. But you can get a broad-strokes idea of some of the more common shapes and their subliminal implications here:
- Square: Like the shape itself, squares are perceived as sturdy, predictable, and trustworthy.
- Circle, oval, or ellipse: With no beginning and no end, circles and their stretched-out cousins the oval and the ellipse symbolize continuity, eternity, and stability (like a wedding ring). They’re often associated with soft, natural, and mystical elements.
- Triangle: A power player, the triangle incites notions of law, strength, direction, motion, and sometimes risk.
- Spiral logos: Another nature-related shape, the spiral conjures notions of growth.
Free orange logo templates you can use.
There are additional design elements to consider for your logo, like which typeface(s) you want to use for your logo or whether you want to use a symbol, your brand name or monogram, or both. Then there’s whether your orange logo design will look good as a social media profile image or on your business cards or letterhead.
Fortunately, you don’t have to figure all of this out ahead of time. Starting with some basic ideas, you can play around with Adobe Express’s free logo maker app, get the creative juices flowing, and play your way to the perfect logo. You can try out a variety of orange logos and edit them until you refine it to your exact desires. Tap any of the following orange logos to customize them and make them your own.
Don’t see what you want? Explore more logo templates and remix any of them to include the orange hues of your dreams.