What pink means in branding

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Surveys in Europe and the United States link pink with sweet foods and drinks, and it is one of the few colours tied to a smell, roses. Pink with white suggests innocence. Today it is seen as a symbol of femininity, though before the second half of the 20th century it often signalled masculinity.

Four palettes from pink

Worked out in OKLCH from the swatch above. Open one to get the light and dark themes, the contrast check and the code.

• Analogous
• Complementary
• Triadic
• Split

History

• The colour is named after the flowers called pinks. It was first used as a colour name in the late 17th century.
• Scholars link the decisive shift of pink towards femininity to the arrival of Barbie in 1959.

Brands known for pink

• Owens Corning

  Dyes its insulation pink and was the first company in the United States to trademark a colour.

• Schiaparelli

  Shocking pink was the signature colour of designer Elsa Schiaparelli.

• Deutsche Telekom

  Uses a magenta logo and has tried to stop other businesses using similar colours.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Pink
• Wikipedia: Magenta

The swatch is my own pick of pink, not an official value.

Other colours

• Redheat, activity, passion, anger, love, joy
• Orangeamusement, warmth, energy, activity, extroversion
• Yellowamusement, gentleness, humour, happiness, spontaneity
• Greennature, life, health, youth, hope
• Blueharmony, confidence, knowledge, intelligence, calmness
• Purplerarity, royalty, luxury, ambition, mystery
• Brownearth, nature, reliability
• Blackelegance, authority, secrets, force
• Whiteperfection, honesty, cleanliness, the new, neutrality