When you want to announce to the world that you’re a new company, one of the quickest ways to do it is to change your color. GE HealthCare, which is trading as an independent company as of Jan. 4, exchanged its old GE blue for a deep purple. But something seemingly as simple as color has deep roots in our human experience.

Color as we know it is a relatively modern invention. Sure, nature was always full of colors — the grass was green, and so were the sea and sky, because many ancient cultures, including the Egyptians and the Greeks, didn’t have a separate word for “blue.” But humans had a great deal of trouble reproducing them in any reliable way.

Vegetable dyes tended to fade quickly into nondescript gray. Humans grew more creative using minerals and animal matter to yield brighter pigments, but those dyes were often ruinously expensive, reserved for the very wealthy or the very holy. Purple, for instance, came from one gland in one particular snail that lived off the coast of Lebanon. One snail yielded one drop of mucus, and it took 12,000 drops to produce 1.4 ounces of dye, enough for the trim of a single garment. Only royalty could afford it.

But in the 19th century, scientists discovered how to create chemical-based dyes that were brighter and far less expensive than anything that came from snails. Once color became easily reproducible and accessible, all sorts of theories developed about what different colors meant.

The meaning of color, though, is much more complex than the idea that yellow is like the sun and therefore it must be cheerful, says Carolyn Purnell, a historian who studies color. “I get annoyed when people talk about color psychology in a simplistic way and when I hear universalizations about color. Our responses to color are very layered, culturally, geographically, and historically. We’re not even aware of how the culture and time we live in affect how we perceive color.”

Color has become an easy way for groups like countries, sports teams, and companies to signify their values. “Color is a very important early signal of branding,” says Jude Stewart, author of Roy G. Biv: An Exceedingly Surprising Book About Color. “What the company is about is communicated, in a way. The tenor of emotion is signaled through color.” Red, for instance, is considered emotional, while blue, its most frequent foil, is cool and analytical. A study of English soccer teams over 60 years showed that teams that wore red had better records.

In order to distinguish itself from the original GE and to stand out from its competitors, GE HealthCare is rolling out a complete rebrand—inclusive of its new color—with the help of Interbrand. At first, they considered green, a color popular among tech startups, but according to William Woduschegg, executive creative director for Interbrand, it didn’t feel right. “It was too loud. It was important to remind ourselves where we were coming from.”

Screenshot 2023-01-15 at 8.06.33 PM.png

After visiting hospitals and talking with medical personnel about their feelings toward GE HealthCare, Interbrand learned that doctors and technicians felt connected to the company through the role the equipment played in helping their patients. To the Interbrand team, that translated into taking the old GE blue, which signaled something cool and mechanical, and humanizing it by blending it with red, a warmer color. “Voilà!” says Woduschegg, “we got some purple tones.” The Interbrand team explored, tested, and aligned on the right tone of purple to represent the brand and compassion.

Purple, as it happens, is very much in the zeitgeist right now. Pantone, manufacturer of the world’s preeminent color matching system, has chosen some form of purple as its Color of the Year twice in the past five years. Ultra Violet, the color of 2018, “symbolizes experimentation and non-conformity, spurring individuals to imagine their unique mark on the world,” according to the company’s website, while Very Peri, the color of 2022, is indicative of the transformational times that we live in: “As we emerge from an intense period of isolation, our notions and standards are changing, and our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways.”

Compassion Purple GE HealthCare.jpg

The Interbrand team wasn’t thinking of Pantone at all when it chose what it calls Compassion Purple for the new GE HealthCare, but that, says Purnell, is part of the magic of color. “It works its way into your awareness,” she says. “You’re aware of it even if you’re not aware you’re aware of it.” In hindsight, purple seems like the obvious choice. Few in the healthcare field are using it, which makes GE HealthCare stand out. More importantly, while it represented a change, it wasn’t an enormous shift. It signaled that GE HealthCare wouldn’t be radically different from GE. It would just be more, yes, compassionate.

Insights

Article

Setting the Right Tone: The Importance of Color for a Brand

Specialties

Who We Are

Topics

Care Delivery

Education

ESG (Environment and Sustainability)

Financial Performance

Future of Health

Hospital Operations