Color is a major part of any brand's identity. Here we're taking a look at some of the most recognizable color identities in the world, as well as some groups and forums on COLOURlovers that could be valuable for anyone who is working to give their brand a little more color.

In this video (part of a series) we take a look at some creative marketing ideas from Sarah Petty of Sarah Petty Photography and The Joy of Marketing.

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Every business loves referrals. In fact, the majority of businesses I work with admit that a large percentage of their most profitable business comes by way of referral. Happy customers and motivated strategic partners can represent a significant portion of your lead generation efforts, but only if you take the care to market to and with them the same way you would any target prospect.

In order to get the most referrals possible you need spend time and energy educating your referral sources and putting tools in their hands that make the act of referring your business even easier.

Below is one resource that you should consider adding to your suite of marketing materials.

Perfect Introduction

It’s a great idea to create tools that make it easy to refer you - even for those rabid customers that want to tell the world about your business. One of the most common referral challenges is getting the right referrals. It doesn’t do your marketing effort much good if you’re chasing dead ends, particularly those sent by a referral source. The proverbial wild goose chase doesn’t serve anyone.

One of the easiest ways to get your referral sources on track is to create a branded document that I refer to as “The Perfect Introduction.” The idea behind this is that you use it to teach your referral sources crucial information that will help them be more effective at referring business. (If the thought of teaching someone to refer feels odd, think about how they feel when they waste their time referring someone that you can’t help)

Your referral introduction tool should contain descriptive copy that answers the following:

With obvious and intended pun and nod to Pete Townshend’s title track on The Who's 1978 release, Who Are You, I would like you to consider the definition of the term hue: the quality of a color as determined by its dominant wavelength.

So, what’s the quality of the colors you use in your business and how do they relate to your organization’s dominant message or brand. Color is a powerful branding tool and one that’s not used as widely or effectively as possible.

The meaning, symbolism and psychology of color used in business is something that’s widely covered on sites like color consultant Kate Smith’s Sensational Color and commonly drawn upon when a graphic designer chooses colors for a corporate identity of logo. (Or that’s the theory anyway)

Green sends a different message than blue and blue different than red. Colors are often carefully chosen in the initial elements of branding, but then not used to the full extent beyond this.

To get the total impact of color as a branding element you must go much deeper. Your organization’s color should be considered in every strategy, tactic and innovation.

While brands that choose to employ identify firms as part of their overall marketing team generally accomplish a comprehensive use of color, most small businesses don’t. The following ideas can help drive color as a major visual element of your brand.

The basic decision

The first step is to pick your colors much like a sports team. It’s not enough to use maroon on the logo and call it a day. You’ve got to state in your marketing plans, training, and communications that you are the blue and gold and move on to reinforcing it as a major element. (Note the use of two colors. Teams have two colors instead of one because colors used in combination send a stronger blended message and they can compliment each other when used.)

Since adding in content channels a few months ago, we've had some great new writers join our community to share ideas & insights in the areas of fashion, wedding planning, interior / web / print design and crafts. As we grow the amount of content we produce we hope to attract even more COLOURlovers from around the world who are passionate about color and how to use it in their own world.... We want to help you get from color inspiration to execution.

As a life long entrepreneur and business owner, I'm stoked to announce the new business channel for our creative & entrepreneurial friends. As technology makes it more and more easy for an independent creative professional to reach a mass market, there's an amazing opportunity for hobby creatives to become micro-business owners... and maybe some day creative-moguls! Maybe you have a local retail store or you share your work with our friends at Etsy... Our new channel aims to provide you with Ideas, information & inspiration for how to convert on the ROI of color.

We're still a growing small-business ourselves and what always keeps us from sharing as much color love as we would want to is the limited resources we have... So, I'm excited to have the new channel supported by a top & quality brand like HP... who is a big believer in the power of color. Their support will allow us to add even more blog posts than we're publishing now and to expand our community to even more people.

Along with the support from HP, we're getting some great help with the channel from John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, who is signing on to share insights and interviews with small business owners about how they're using color in their work. As always we'll be sharing our own inspiration galleries and fun color posts too.

Do you have a great story to tell about the colors of your business?

A Little Colorful Business Inspiration

We look forward to the content that we'll start putting out in this channel next week, but to to get this things started, we've compiled a small inspiration gallery of some colorful logos we've seen recently. Business isn't only about getting into the black...

Logos from LogoPond. Find the direct links in the trend section.

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Pewpabic Pottery is a U.S. National Historical Landmark still in operation today much like it was when it was founded in 1903. The studio and school continues its long history of creating pottery and tiles with the iridescent glazes that made them famous, which are like an oil slick with an incredible translucent quality and a phantasmagoric depth of color. The works of Mary Chase Perry Stratton and Horace James Caulkins, the two responsible for the studio's start, can be seen in collections all over the world from the Louvre to the Detroit Insitute of Arts, and their architectural pieces are in many prominent spots like Herald Square in New York City and Shedd's Aquarium in Chicago.

The History

An integral part in Detroit's contribution to the Arts & Crafts movement in America. The Pottery's first home was a stable on Alfred Street in Detroit. Four years later, Pewabic Pottery moved to a new facility on East Jefferson designed by architect William Buck Stratton in the Tudor Revival style. In 1991, the building (which still houses the Pottery) and its contents were designated a National Historic Landmark and today is Michigan's only historic pottery.

As more people are using bicycles as their main form of transportation, especially within metropolitan areas where most people only travel a few miles everyday, sharing the roads has become more of an issue.

In an attempt to raise public awareness and start a dialog about the rights of cyclists and the problems with our current road sharing systems, people across the country, and across the world, are creating Ghost Bikes as a memorial to those who have been struck or killed while riding on the public streets.

Photo by Howard Kaplan

What Are Ghost Bikes

Ghost Bikes are bikes that have been built from scrap or donated parts that can no longer be reused. They are stripped of all unnecessary parts that could potentially be desicrated or reclaimed for scrapes, painted stark white, then fixed to the site where a cyclist has been hit or killed.

Photo by wiki

The History of Ghost Bikes

The first ghost bike was erected in St. Louis, Missouri in 2003 by Patrick Van Der Tuin. He got the idea after witnessing a cyclist get hit by a car in the bike lane. He painted and placed a bike frame with a hand painted sign using red lettering which read: "Cyclist Struck Here." Since then, similar projects have started across the US and other cities worldwide.

Even if you haven't yet been able to travel as your wildest dreams may desire, put these locations on your list of places to see in life. I hope you enjoy the pictures in our color-centric version of the series, and we regret it can't contain every one of the world's gorgeous locations. If you want even more, Read the book of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die or visit the Flickr 1,000 Places Group.

Here Are 19 of Those Places...

by Christopher Chan
The Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

by Jeff Epp
Cherry Blossom Viewing, Japan

by Geff Rossi
Notre-Dame Basilica, Quebec, Canada

by Becky E
Ayers Rock and the Olgas, Australia

by il Presbite
Siena, Italy

by nadi0
The Great Ocean Road, Australia

by Barrosopal
Palacio de Cristal, Retiro Park, Madrid

by Christopher Chan
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

Think you can't find beauty in a bank? Think again. The Dexia Tower, located in Brussels, embodies just that. Thanks to the creativity of LAb[au], a Belgium based digital design lab, the Dexia Tower has become infinitely more than just a home for paperwork and numbers.

The tower itself went up in 2006, and since then has been host to a variety of fantastic light shows. The third tallest building in Brussels has a lot more going for it than just height, however: Of the building's 6000 windows, 4200 of them contain an installation of 12 light bulbs, each housing 3 LED's (a green, blue and red) that can be combined to form a complete palette of color. The result is a tremendous canvas that can display anything from letters to geometric designs. Seem wasteful? It isn't --recent tests show that the tower uses 1/3 of the electricity that Paris' famed Eiffel Tower uses, thanks to a highly efficient energy saving LED lighting system.

by Pierre J.

The tower is currently exhibiting a show called "Who’s afraid of Red, Green and Blue?" which is shown in the picture above. In a two month collaboration with the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, the tower exhibits the temperature of the following day using color. The color code follows a naturally coordinating scale, with violet symbolizing -6° or colder and warming through the color spectrum, red being at the opposite end and symbolizing +6° or warmer. The result is beauty with something useful below the surface, and while there is much to be said for beauty and art all on their own, the function of the Dexia Tower's current show lends a lovely depth to the spectacle. Hit the link below to see this stunning exhibit in action.

Located in the City of Lights, the Eiffel Tower is one of the world’s most familiar structures and one of the most treasured symbols of France. Weighing a total of 10,100 tons and rising 324 m (including the flagpole) the Eiffel Tower has survived and been protected through the years because of paint. Paint, it seems, “is the essential element in the conservation of metal works”. [Gustave Eiffel]

Well, I don't know about you but when I think of paint, I immediately have a coloring urge.

What Color is the Eiffel Tower?

by Bret Arnett

Monsieur Eiffel chose to paint the Tower red after it was erected and since then the Eiffel Tower has changed colors several times transitioning between red-browns to mustard yellows back to red-brown and more recently, variations of brown. According to the official Eiffel Tower website, the most current colour is labeled Bronze though others have labeled the current colour Milk Chocolate Brown or Brownish-Grey. (Left: The layers of paint and colors of the Eiffel Tower through the years. You can find this on the first floor of the Tower.)

Which Color is the Official “Bronze”?

by absolutwade