Who do you think of when you see orange?

Advertisements at Broadway City Hall SkyTrain station, Vancouver, BC

These days most brands have their signature colour. UPS pretty much owns brown, Coke has its own trademark red, and the Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank has a stranglehold on green.

So, it was very interesting to see these two advertisements, using very similar shades of orange for two unrelated businesses in two completely different industries.

Other firms in these industries have their own colours. In the mobile telephone business Bell uses blue and Rogers and Virgin use red. Wind has laid its claim to orange.

In the education realm Langara has staked its claim to orange, the University of Toronto uses blue, while both Okanagan College and York University use red.

Orange is an interesting colour. It is not the most popular colours for brands, that would be red or blue, but it is distinctive. And these two firms are not the only ones to use orange. Home Depot has been using orange for years and ING and now Tangerine use it for banking.

I don't fault either Wind or Langara for using orange. Distinctive and unlike brown it is not outrageously out of fashion. It was just odd to see the two advertisements so close together.