Tabulated from 687 brand logos featuring 1,892 distinct colors, excluding Black (#00000) and White (#FFFFFF). Matched against the 167 historical standard [Crayola crayon colors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Crayola_crayon_colors), again not counting black and white.
Color use was weighted to adjust for brands using multiple colors in a logo, i.e., each of three colors used in a brand constituted one-third the weight of a single color brand. Colors were converted to CIELAB color space and the Euclidian distance was calculated between each of them and the reference crayon colors. A threshold of 5 *ΔE* or less was chosen to represent a match, and the results were totaled.
There were a total of 1,712 matches across 108 reference crayon colors. Only the top 50 crayon colors are included in this chart. For those brand colors that had more than one match within the threshold, only the closest match was counted. Data current to February 2025.
Color matching, tabulation and chart layout done in Perl with Graphics::ColorObject and PDF::API2 modules.
There is a us Marine somewhere suddenly getting why his poop is rainbow colored
What insights can we draw from the distribution of these top 50 brand colors?
I do notice a influence of red and blue. I knoe that red is the most eye-catching color and also travels the furthest in our atmosphere, but what about blue? Also, I’m not seeing an obvious pattern overall. Is there a reason behind these color choices, or am I the only one that thinks this looks random?
![[OC] Top 50 brand colors as indexed by Crayola crayons](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/wt66rfeshpoe1-1920x1024.png)
3 comments
Tabulated from 687 brand logos featuring 1,892 distinct colors, excluding Black (#00000) and White (#FFFFFF). Matched against the 167 historical standard [Crayola crayon colors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Crayola_crayon_colors), again not counting black and white.
Color use was weighted to adjust for brands using multiple colors in a logo, i.e., each of three colors used in a brand constituted one-third the weight of a single color brand. Colors were converted to CIELAB color space and the Euclidian distance was calculated between each of them and the reference crayon colors. A threshold of 5 *ΔE* or less was chosen to represent a match, and the results were totaled.
There were a total of 1,712 matches across 108 reference crayon colors. Only the top 50 crayon colors are included in this chart. For those brand colors that had more than one match within the threshold, only the closest match was counted. Data current to February 2025.
Brand color information from [BrandColors](https://brandcolors.net). Based on a similar tabulation conducted by James Archer in 2015, discussed at https://jamesarcher.co/250/the-50-most-popular-brand-colors.
Color matching, tabulation and chart layout done in Perl with Graphics::ColorObject and PDF::API2 modules.
There is a us Marine somewhere suddenly getting why his poop is rainbow colored
What insights can we draw from the distribution of these top 50 brand colors?
I do notice a influence of red and blue. I knoe that red is the most eye-catching color and also travels the furthest in our atmosphere, but what about blue? Also, I’m not seeing an obvious pattern overall. Is there a reason behind these color choices, or am I the only one that thinks this looks random?
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