Color Wars, but make it corporate
This week I present a collection of scattered advertisements, business cards, promotional materials for various local businesses — all bearing the same red, white, and blue color scheme. These colors are prevalent in global advertisements, but they mean something different here in the United States, even compared to countries with similar flag colors.
Color psychology is not just as simple as flag color match = American dollars. According to the Six Degrees’ An International Guide to the Use of Color in Marketing and Advertising, the the psychology of color changes according to the region, even when there’s no direct representation of a flag in sight. Per the Six Degrees’ “International Color Symbolism” chart, Blue is generally a respected color worldwide, representing peace and calm. In the United States, it’s said to have another connotation; loyalty and solidarity, pretty uniquely American, as well as our western association between blue and masculinity; Blue for boys, pink for girls.
Red is a color we associate with excitement, danger, passion, and power. It’s also more political than blue, especially where it concerns the international market. In China, it represents good luck, happiness, and communism. The Russians have their own connection to red, representing strength, solidarity, and their history of soviet nationalism. In Europe, it represents something less professional, more brash; “visibility, cheapness, loudness,” per the Six Degrees chart. Our candy apples and firetrucks are often adopted by more accessible brands. Think Target, Walmart, and McDonald’s (whose branding is different in Europe, red replaced with hunter green.)
The Mid-20th century brought the term “coca-colonization,” when US consumerist culture diffused itself throughout primarilly Europe, South America, and Asia. Coke’s signature bright red was a “representation of American imperial power,” as Mark Pendergrast puts it in his NYT article Viewpoints; A Brief History of Coca-Colonization. Hitler was famously anti-Coke. (As in, the beverage.) Eisenhower introduced Coke to the Russians, who liked it very much. The cans were changed from Coca-Cola red to white with a red star when it was brought over the border, as Stalin would have resisted his men’s consuming a stereotypical “American drink.”
Together, red and blue branding speaks to our national character, our identities as Americans, whether consciously or not. In his New Yorker article “Budweiser and the Selling of America,“ Vinson Cunningham remarks on Budweisers patriotic rebrand in Summer 2016, and how it’s meant not only to speak to current politics, but to the American ethos. Advertisements in Western consumer culture don’t just sell products, they sell you an identity. Your consumer habits mean something about you in particular. And if you buy this bright red beer, you will spontaneously morph into a Levi-wearing trucker with a free American spirit, and you’ll be peacefully reclined on some West Coast beach with this here Budweiser in your palm. Red and blue advertising is not just patriotic, it uses subliminal patriotic messaging to create a link between who they are, and who you could become, within the framework of the American national character.
The Small Business Administration’s red and blue color scheme communicates they’re trustworthy and professional, large and imposing, but in a disarming way; a “subtle nod to our status as a government organization.” The Red and Blue Corporation™ is your friend. It subliminally speaks to our core and the way we define ourselves.
This to say, branding design influences every facet of consumption, and we are constantly in conversation with design, whether or not we believe ourselves to be above that sort of thing.
The New School and Columbia, red team vs blue team
One of the foundational elements of the New School brand is color. Any visual communication—print, digital, or environmental—must employ our core brand colors to reinforce the university’s identity.” The new school’s logo is its own specific identifying red, “Parsons red,” can only be represented a particular way.
Pantone Breakdown: Rubine Red (51), Yellow 012 (49)
CMYK: C (0), M (99), Y (91), K (0)
RGB: R (232), G (46), B (33)
HEX: #E82E21
WEBSITE HEX: #E42A1D (ADA-compliant)
And in the 2010 Paula Scher rebrand, we created our own font typeface, “Neue.” The new school has its own version of identity advertising, a visual representation of its ethos. Per the school website,
“One of the foundational elements of the New School brand is color. Any visual communication—print, digital, or environmental—must employ our core brand colors to reinforce the university’s identity. The secondary color palette should never dominate the primary palette of Parsons Red, black, and white.”
We were founded in 1919 by a crew of ex-Columbia profs. We were founded to be the anti-Columbia, with their pale blue and white school colors, their logo resembling the old guard, Ivy League facet of academia. By contrast, we represented forward thinking, futuristic vision of academia. The bold double lines have been there since the beginning, and we haven’t used a serif since the thirties. And a red team vs blue team dichotomy, a kind of reacquisition of red for the left in the heat of McCarthyism.
05-15, the schools branding adopted a graffiti motif that was critiqued for its lack of academic vibes. Which brought us to the scher rebrand. Coca Cola esque, a loud “parsons red,” with a bold, angular font in a futuristic, forward-thinking white.
Branding is not always overtly political or patriotic. Certainly the laundromat isn’t taking an objective political stance in their use of red and blue. But color choice in us consumer culture is never neutral (pun intended.) It’s woven into every aspect of our history and our national identity. Whether it is intentional or not, color has history and it’s never not representing something. Whether branding embraces the character of the color scheme or subverts the wider tropes, it always rubs against it. When we buy or reject a product, when we design branding, when we pass by discarded business cards on the streets of our neighborhood, we are always in conversation with the identity that color holds; whether or not we realize it.
Reading List:
📚 An International Guide to the Use of Color in Marketing and Advertising, Six Degrees
📚 Budweiser and the Selling of America, Vinson Cunningham
📚 Viewpoints; A Brief History of Coca-Colonization, Mark Pendergrast
📚 The New School branding timeline: https://histories.newschool.edu/archives/new-look-brief-survey-typefaces-logos-used-new-school?utm_source=chatgpt.com
📚 Nation Branding: Concepts, Issues, Practice, Dinnie And T C Melewar Keith