Lets Talk About Purple

Purple. Red and blue mixed together, or try pink and blue for a lighter shade. When I was young, I always used to say 'purple is my favourite colour', a girly, fun and pretty colour but not too predictable for a girl like pink, some many argue a little 'edgier'. Well that's what I thought anyway. As I have grown up I have started to like purple less and pink more, and I have shied away from using purple on my colour palettes for the home and fashion. Despite this I quite like dusky purply colours. For a long time I have considered purple to be a difficult colour on it's own, not like navy, my 'go to colour'. I believe it works well as a combination colour in a print or an accent colour but alone is seems so dominant and the wrong shade can look cheap. A friend of mine used to hate lilac with a passion, 'such an old lady colour' she would say, to me lilac was always an inoffensive colour, yet not one I would choose. I think purple looks incredible in nature, so many beautiful flowers, amethyst and fantastic 'trendy' vegetables are purple.

The common associations purple holds are that of wisdom, wealth, opulence, religion and supernatural. Which most people would surely consider positive associations. Surprisingly few companies typically use purple for their logos and corporate identity, not many sports teams use purple for their kits*, you will see less purple book covers and magazine covers that other colours and purple clothing also seems to be less in demand in High Street and High End shops especially in Spring/ Summer. Then considering the use on a wider scale, there are very few flags that utilise purple even as an accent colour.

I believe that because it is a colour that isn't widely used, when a company uses it well, it can look fantastic and really stand out from the crowd. Liberty London, one of my favourite shops (a fantastic High End Department Store), uses Purple for their corporate identity. The beautiful paper bags with the gold Liberty crest are quite distinguished around London. The purple and gold combination links the associations of 'wealth' and 'supernatural' well to the company's image that they want to portray to customers.

My second example of a good use of purple for a brand has to be Cadbury. As a shameless chocolate lover, I have come to appreciate the metallic yet matt finish of the wrappers and packaging. I really hope they don't try and change this any time soon. Using a darker more bluer shade than the 'Liberty purple', the packaging represents a subtle luxury. The splashy logo with the milk and the chocolate pot adds more of a sense of fun to the packaging. Following on from my previous post about describing colour most people will know what shade 'Cadbury's Purple' is.

*Sorry I have a limited sporting knowledge, so please excuse my ignorance if there are many sports teams with purple kits.