What is the color of stuff these days? What do companies do with color offerings when in competition with each other? Do they strive for uniqueness or is it better to not stray too far from the pack? Let’s take a informal look at some popular consumer products and see if we can learn anything from how they approach color. At the very least, it’s fun to pull the palette colors into a set and view it in a disassociated way (like Adidas for example).

iPod Nano vs. Microsoft Zune

The iPod Nano and Zune color offerings are very different as the Zune team decides to offer less “pop” and go with a slightly more mature feel. Honestly, the iPod colors are more appealing to me. For a product that is mostly used for entertainment, I think having a more “trendy” feel is actually appropriate. The iPod red is my favorite of the bunch.

Nikon Coolpix vs. Canon SD1100

The Nikon shares a similar palette with the Zune but Canon goes for a more pastel set. My guess is that these pocket cameras are aimed more towards the female demographic and that’s why Canon went that way. They look like bra colors to me.

Palm Centro vs. Nokia E63

These two popular “mid-range” smart phones break the trend and offer similar colors. Probably because with phones, features are vastly more important than superficial colors. Of the products so far, these are often used as business tools. The Centro offers unique colors to specific carriers. Which kind of sucks for the consumer who is picky about their carrier.

Gap “Summer T” vs. American Apparel “Summer T-Shirt”

Breaking away from consumer electronics — Gap seems a little conservative compared with American Apparel (AA). I see a lot more trendy color offerings with AA. The brown, dark blue, dark teal, slate purple are staples of super trendy indie music t-shirts. See here for reference

Reebok Classic vs. Adidas Superstar

Then I wondered about less recently trendy colors and compared apparel that’s been around awhile. With classic sneakers, the basic colors stay the same — black, navy, white and they come out with trendy colors every so often. With Adidas, they have a rich “football” tradition and unless I’m drunk again, it’s no surprise the palette shown here is akin to many South American country flag colors.

Mini Cooper vs. Volkswagen Beetle

That led me to think if longevity had anything to do with it. So i tried to choose two similar cars that are hip and would be more likely to offer unique colors. It appears that they do try to avoid trendiness as the colors for both are very palatable although the Beetle colors do skew a bit feminine to me.

So what did we learn today? Here are some practical ideas we can consider:

If you’re designing something…
new, you may want to stand out color-wise from the status quo to visually distinguish yourself .

If you’re designing something…
meant to compete in the same space — skewing your colors to attract your bread and butter demographic might help.

If you’re designing something…
where function is more important than form, maybe you can offer colors as a special incentive.

If you’re designing something…
with s short shelf-life, it may allow you to be more trendy.

If you’re designing something…
with longevity, you can offer special editions to generate interest/stay relevant as time passes.

If you’re designing something…
with longevity but meant to be hip, you can stay conservative overall but be trendy skewing to the desired demographic.

Was it good for you? Comment!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Colors, Design, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.