Have you ever taken a good look at the logos of the Internet’s biggest empires? One person did and noticed some really interesting trends. A lot of them tend toward blue or red. Is there any reason for this? Besides the fact that blue is much less often associated with color-blindness than red (Mark Zuckerberg’s red-green colorblindness is why Facebook’s logo and design have so much blue in them, after all), blue stands out without being painful on the eyes. Remember the early days of the Web when people made webpages that pained the eyes to look at? A lot of those pages contained bright neons and yes, reds. When I started learning HTML, I avoided red because I didn’t want my visitors to stare at a red screen, nor did I want to stare at the red while testing the site. Still, red does stand out and whatever the reason for choosing it, it’s a popular choice. A very popular one, apparently.
What I found most interesting was the grouping of logos by type of site. Blogging sites use a lot of blues and yellows and oranges. Social networks are even more closely clustered in the green/blue range. While most of this is probably coincidence, it’s interesting to think about. Looking at logo colors is interesting but probably not the way to choose the color of your next logo. Remember Facebook?
Besides, if you really want design advice, take some from a profanity-laden design advice generator.