App redesign - political colours

As in the original app design, I wanted to keep the colours of the parties as the colour scheme for the app, which change depending on the party you align with the most. Obviously, to do this I would need to use the colours from the parties and decided to find out what the exact colours were in order to give my app professionalism.

SNP: #FFFF00

Lib Dem: #FDBB30

Tory: #0087DC

Labour: #DC241f

UKIP: #70147A

Green Party: #78b943

The SNP & yellow

How they became yellow:

Yellow in politics goes back to at least 1928, when the Liberal Former Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George published a report of a party inquiry, “Britain’s Industrial Future”.

That report is still referred to today as 'The Yellow Book', presumably because during the second half of the nineteenth century, sensational fiction and adventure stories were published with yellow covers. A 'yellow' book was something new, whether that was for better or worse.

Of course a more obvious colour might have been blue and white, to match the Scottish flag, but blue was already taken.

The colour yellow in marketing

Yellow logos invoked perceptions of fun and modernity. Brands like McDonalds, IKEA, and National Geographic use yellow as a key colour in their brand identity.

  

Liberal Democrats & Orange

How they became orange:

The Liberal Democrats are the result of the merging of the UK Liberal Party (historically yellow, as above) and the Social Democratic Party, whose ideology is routed in socialism (historically red, see below). See the connection yet? The obvious choice was to combine the two, creating orange.

The colour orange in marketing

Orange logos invoke feelings of friendliness, cheerfulness, and confidence. Brands that use orange include Amazon, Nickelodeon, Harley Davidson, and Mozilla Firefox.

  

Conservatives and blue

How they became blue:

The Conservative Party adopted the colours of the Union Jack, red, white, blue, from the inception of the party in 1834. Variations on the Union Jack have been used to represent the Conservative party ever since.

After Labour began to run with a similar hue of red, the Conservative party dropped the red all together, and the white, sticking with blue as their party colour.

The colour blue in marketing

Blue logos invoke feelings of confidence, success and reliability. Brands using blue include Facebook, Vimeo, Dell, Twitter, Intel, and Volkswagen.

  

Labour and red

How they became red:

The colour red has been associated with left-wing politics since the French Revolution. British sailors mutinied near the mouth of the River Thames in 1797 and hoisted a red flag on several ships, the red flag had previously been used to represent the "martyrs' blood" of those who had been killed.

A plain red flag was the emblem of the British Labour Party from its formation, to a far less bloody time in 1986 when it was replaced with a friendlier red rose.

However, the party used purple rather than red as a background colour in its 1997 election broadcasts, as it targeted central ground and Gordon Brown said "purple is the colour of passion"

The colour red in marketing

Red logos invoke feelings of expertise and self-assurance. Lots of global brands use red, notably Lego, Virgin, Coca-Cola, Nintendo, and Kellogg's.

 UKIP and purple

How they became purple:

Purple's history in politics is much newer. UKIP was established in 1993 and, as the history of the colour purple in British politics is relatively untouched before 1993, purple's use before this date was as a symbol of combined 'blue' and 'red' politics, though this isn't the case for UKIP.

The colour purple in marketing

Purple logos invoke feelings of femininity, glamor and charm. Brands using purple include Cadbury's, Yahoo, Hallmark and Monster Jobs.

The Green Party and Green

How they became green:

Whilst it might be obvious why The Green Party chose the colour green, the history goes back a long, long way.

The first recorded use of green in politics was in the 6th Century, with a political faction in Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire.

The Green Party in the UK were originally called 'The Ecology Party', and changed their name in 1990. The party have always used the colour green in the campaigns, an obvious choice for a party with environmentalism at it's core, along with a sunflower as their logo. The newly formed Green Party took their name from their own slogan 'The green party'.

The colour green in marketing

Green logos involve feelings of Environmental friendliness, toughness, durability, masculinity and sustainability. Brands using the colour green include BP, Android, Starbucks, Spotify, and Land Rover.

I inputted the hex colours into Adobe kuler given to me by the research I had done, and most seemed as if they were pretty similar to the logos that accompanied the hex colours. However, the colour given for Labour seemed more pink than red and seemed as if I would need to adjust this. But when I did the same into adobe XD, the colour seemed to be spot on and very different to Adobe Kuler.