Choosing the colors for a company : A case study on how the right colors can mediate the right image of a company

Abstract: Our world is made up by millions of colors. Everywhere we go we see a variation of colors that describes the environment. Artists use colors to give an emotion to the viewer and give a deeper meaning to the art. Companies have different colors in their logos and on their websites. For example, a red colored logo can give a feeling of passion, energy and power. But used in a different situation, a red color can implicate dangerand death. The research about colors goes very deep, but there is still alot that has not been tested or discovered. This study will examine whether companies can use colors to mediate the right feeling to their customers. The method to do this included a lot of theoretical background and knowledge about colors. When data was collected a mid-fi prototype of a website was created. This mid-fi website was then transformed into three different high-fi prototypes. The three prototypes had the same content but what put them apart was their color schemes. The tests was done face to face or over the internet. The test person had to answer a short questionnaire were the person described the feelings that appeared when using the three different prototypes. After the test a short interview with each test person took place were some expressions from the test was discussed. The result for the first and second website showed a correlation between the two websites. The users had similar answers on these websites, but they also had some comments that separated the websites. The second website was in the end the most popular website which supported the hypothesis.The conclusion from the study is that colors are a very powerful tool to use if a company wants to attract more customers. This was a quite small study and to draw the conclusion that the right colors actually gives more clicks on a website, a larger and longer study must be made. This is so that the study can compare previous years sales with the year werethey introduced the new color scheme.